The Critical Compass Podcast - August 15, 2026


The Great Books Program ｜ John Serafini & Steve Bertucci

Topics
homeschooling conversations education marital obligations homeschooling programs parallel institutions credentialism
Guests
Steve Bertucci John Serafini
Mentioned
John Case Pat Carmack Aristotle Socrates Odyssey Hector Francis Whittowson Peter Boghossian Frigus Harchman Jordan Peterson Saint Augustine Mortimer Adler Fergus Hodgson Murmur Adler Shakespeare Taylor Juliet Plato
Why we NEED an Alternative to Modern Education w⧸ John Serafini Equalization is Money Laundering w⧸ 222 Minutes

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 11 minutes

Words per minute

156.37

Word count

11,170

Sentence count

369

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 saying what does it mean to be a happy person what does it mean to be a good person
00:00:04 for our own experience like thinking well practically how am i going about through life
00:00:07 they're like intellectual questions and then there are questions that we have to answer
00:00:13 very practically in our own lives great books programs the heart and soul of it all so all
00:00:20 that leads uh to the great books and this uh work of inquiry that we are into in the classes
00:00:27 what are other options i mean people have thought about these things and being able to read through
00:00:33 them on their own terms right not interpreted from somebody else but to read the source texts
00:00:39 themselves at length and then to be able to talk about them and try to in your own mind
00:00:45 come to what you actually think and believe about the world and to change your mind
00:00:57 Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Critical Compass podcast. My name is Mike, and of course, always
00:01:10 here with me is James. We are very pleased to be joined by Mr. John Serafini. He's the owner of
00:01:16 Serafini Books, Calgary's bookstore for classics and fine editions. And we're also joined by Mr.
00:01:23 Steve Bertucci. He's a director with the Angelicum Academy and, uh, the, uh, director of the Great
00:01:29 Books program. Uh, he's been doing that. I believe he said before we hit record, uh, for, uh, 27
00:01:34 years and they started on, uh, they started on dial up. And so this is an online program. Uh,
00:01:40 and John in Calgary is, uh, very soon going to be taking this, uh, into a physical classroom.
00:01:47 And, uh, we're excited to just chat with these gentlemen, see, uh, you know, maybe they can,
00:01:52 uh open our minds to some uh some books that we haven't we're big internet guys you know
00:01:57 books are aren't they just uh antiquated things of the past john yeah no i uh you'll have to tell
00:02:04 the to the two guys who came to the store i don't know how long ago was that like a week or two ago
00:02:08 yeah yeah guilty there yeah we always seem to leave with something yeah i think so it's no
00:02:16 timeless for sure uh reading a good book that's uh like meeting an old friend if you're reading
00:02:22 and rereading it yeah so what was your um maybe if we can start with you john and then we'll have
00:02:28 steve weigh in on a little bit of the history here but what was your um what was your introduction to
00:02:34 the great books program and why have you why have you decided to to kind of re uh i don't know if
00:02:40 reformat or reshape or something like this but but bring it into the classroom
00:02:45 yeah uh well i've got steve to thank for that in many respects i started i think in 2007
00:02:53 when i was 14 i started the great books program online with steve and uh i guess dr james taylor
00:03:01 who's now passed away they were the moderators for my uh cohort for almost i guess it was four
00:03:08 years with the program and then i went off to college studied great books there as well
00:03:14 and like a socratic dialogue method in the honest program at franciscan university of steubenville
00:03:20 and just really had fallen in love with these books and this method of education
00:03:24 discussing books with people and then came back up to calgary was doing different business things
00:03:30 and then found my way into teaching again and then steve and i we reconnected uh kind of at
00:03:35 that point and have kept up i've been teaching with the program almost a decade now i think
00:03:41 online and with the bookstore that i'm doing obviously books are a great passion of mine
00:03:49 i knew that there was something really valuable about the program from my long experience with
00:03:53 it i wanted to be able to make it more human in some ways although i had a great experience online
00:03:59 i think that there's something really unique about forming a community
00:04:03 we're like embodied embedded persons being able to meet other people in person to see
00:04:08 facial expressions, to be able to have these deep conversations in person seemed to me just really
00:04:14 valuable. So I talked to Steve and another gentleman Pat Carmack with Angelicum and they
00:04:18 gave me the approval to go ahead with it and offer it here in Calgary. So we're doing that
00:04:22 for high schoolers and adults of different ages who are interested in lifelong learning.
00:04:27 So that's kind of the thing we got going up in September.
00:04:30 yeah perfect and i i know last time we talked even mentioned without getting too deep like the way
00:04:38 that we converse with each other directly maps into the way that we think in a sense and so is
00:04:45 that that's going to be a component of it as well yeah for sure so we can talk about socratic method
00:04:51 but um i think a lot of times we don't really know what we think until we say it to other people
00:04:56 right maybe we think we've got a clarity of thought in our own mind and then we try to
00:05:01 express it and that can be a difficult process to say exactly what we mean maybe because we don't
00:05:06 fully know what it is in detail oftentimes sometimes we've got clear ideas but being able
00:05:13 to have that exploratory format of conversation which is what we do in the program it's socratic
00:05:19 method so the people are the moderators like steve or myself we are helping students explore these
00:05:26 books by asking questions and talking to them about the great ideas that have captured the
00:05:33 mind of Western civilization for millennia and the great thinkers of the West. And so
00:05:37 they're the students, the participants are able to read these texts, to encounter these
00:05:41 thoughts on their own, and then to talk about them with their peers. So if that's high schoolers
00:05:48 or college age people or older adults, to be able to explore these together.
00:05:53 Well, I actually wanted to kind of pivot off that to Steve here. Steve, speaking in terms of learning how to communicate people, learning how to talk and learning how to think through talking, what's been your experience being with this program for almost 30 years at this point and kind of seeing how it has changed?
00:06:16 I know you mentioned before we started recording that this was, in as many words, sort of a bit of a passion project for you to, for you and your family to fill in the gaps in the education system that you didn't, that you guys didn't feel were being adequately, your children weren't being adequately educated.
00:06:37 educated um how has maybe give me the the 30 000 foot overview of what the last almost 30 years has
00:06:45 been with this program for you well uh oh gosh 30 000 just a little question well i think i'm
00:06:56 finally i'm beginning to become a semi-educated person
00:07:01 You know, it's an old canard, really, that I think everyone has heard about. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. And really the core of what you might call the wisdom of Socrates, insofar as he had wisdom, is that he was acutely aware of how little any of us knows.
00:07:28 I mean, if you consider the universe of knowables, it's a big universe of knowables, how much of that universe does any of us know?
00:07:40 Well, you know, we're almost infinitely ignorant when looked at from that perspective.
00:07:49 So the very end of education, I think, that's the place to start.
00:07:54 In fact, in our orientation class for our incoming new students, we spend the class, excuse me, at least part of the class, talking about the very end in view of education.
00:08:09 When I used to, I don't do this much anymore at all, but I used to travel about the country giving talks about education to mostly homeschooling people.
00:08:21 And I would ask them, why are you doing this?
00:08:24 what's the point it's a lot of time and trouble and expense that you're going to
00:08:30 to educate your children why are you doing this and you get all sorts of answers I would get all
00:08:37 sorts of responses to that question I want them to know where to find the knowledge that they need
00:08:45 or I want them to be a good citizen or I want them to get a good job and all these responses
00:08:52 and i would i would ask well why do you want them to be a good citizen why do you want them to have
00:08:57 a good job why should they know how to read and write what's the point of all that eventually
00:09:05 you know they would get annoyed with me asking that question but it comes down to
00:09:11 uh i want my kids to be happy so all education in my opinion properly so called is education
00:09:20 for happiness and that of course brings up a very key question well who's the happy person
00:09:28 and we agree both of us in the program with angelica we agree with our old friend socrates
00:09:36 who would say the happy person the happy man the happy woman is the one who is good and noble
00:09:42 Well, who's that? There's always another question. Who's the good and noble person? Well,
00:09:51 Socrates would tell you that it's the person who loves what is good, who loves what is noble,
00:09:58 who loves what is beautiful. You know, truth, goodness, and beauty. It's not enough just to
00:10:04 know what is true and know what's beautiful and know what's good if you don't love those things.
00:10:11 So if you love what's evil, false, and ugly, you aren't going to have a happy life.
00:10:16 You aren't going to have a good life.
00:10:18 So that's the end in view.
00:10:20 And we tell this to students that so knowledge is not the end of education.
00:10:27 It's a necessary means.
00:10:29 It's essential.
00:10:29 We have to learn what's true, good, and beautiful.
00:10:32 But so the primary, and I'll stop.
00:10:36 I won't keep going on.
00:10:37 But the primary pedagogical question is not how do I help my students to know what's true, but rather it's how do I help my students to love what's true?
00:10:51 There's a great deal of mystery involved in this sort of thing.
00:10:55 But so that's the beginning.
00:10:58 And that's really why we started the program.
00:11:05 Because if you go to your local school, public schools, ask the principal or ask the superintendent, you know, what are these kids doing here?
00:11:14 What's the point of all this?
00:11:15 They're not going to tell you.
00:11:17 It's to learn to love the things we ought to love.
00:11:21 so uh anyway in the great books are the uh well people for instance who uh were educated say in
00:11:31 the early middle ages and the later middle ages well even up to the present day but back in those
00:11:36 days uh if someone like say in the 13th century someone's going to school in the west in the
00:11:43 western world what are they reading well they're reading the great books they're discussing the
00:11:50 great books in their writing about what they encounter in those works anyway with that i'll
00:11:58 i'll be quiet well that seems to resonate with like with why we even have a podcast is we were
00:12:09 curious about ideas and wanted to stress test ideas but you need that curiosity to even get
00:12:17 started down this path and some people are blessed with that curiosity and sometimes
00:12:23 that curiosity needs a little bit of needs help to foster that that um that curiosity
00:12:31 in a space and so i'm curious what the biggest i guess like what was the biggest surprise
00:12:44 By engaging in this program and going through it, what were like, what was one of the biggest
00:12:52 kind of revelations that you've, that you've come, or that you've come to in practice? 0.67
00:13:00 Well beyond, as I was talking about earlier, realizing more and more what an ignoramus
00:13:10 i am it was uh well i'll tell you the best thing about it the best part of this whole experience
00:13:18 has been seeing uh this appetite these the students when they get a taste of what's true
00:13:30 when they when they see it you know and it can happen
00:13:34 and well at any time during a class really but when they get a taste of it and they develop
00:13:42 i think that you were actually touching on it the way you were speaking there
00:13:47 they develop an appetite a greater curiosity a greater desire to know and to see that
00:13:54 uh spark get lit or to see that spark ignite in them this this desire and as they go through
00:14:06 the program and they spend hours and hours and hours in conversation about what they encounter
00:14:12 in these works um the appetite grows it doesn't get it doesn't get uh satisfied so to speak
00:14:22 The more they pursue this path of inquiry, the greater is the satisfaction, the greater is the love.
00:14:36 And so for me, anyway, personally, that's been the greatest thing to see that in these students and come to know the students there.
00:14:47 That's a great, yeah, that's a great thought.
00:14:50 um yeah you you uh you'll yeah you'll never be satisfied when you uh when you kind of crack the
00:14:57 uh when you when you break the facade open you know there's just so much more at the end of the
00:15:03 of the rabbit hole right john i wanted to ask you um you know we talked about this a little bit
00:15:09 uh in person and maybe we can kind of expand on these ideas a little bit as you may know um
00:15:14 I don't know if you know Steve, but most of our channel, we've been fairly focused over the last year and a half or so on the matter of Alberta independence.
00:15:24 And we have a big audience of people who are fairly heterodox in their thinking.
00:15:30 You know, they're maybe, you know, disillusioned conservatives and maybe even, you know, we certainly know a not unsubstantial number of disillusioned liberals and left-wing thinkers who have simply just become, you know, a little bit jaded with our political system in Canada here.
00:15:52 But, John, maybe you can speak to the idea that we sort of touched on about how just what it means to become a critical thinker and why a healthy knowledge of the classical liberal arts, if you will, how that helps with that.
00:16:13 Is that too broad?
00:16:15 No, I don't think so.
00:16:16 I mean, take a look at university campuses, when people try to engage in what Socrates did.
00:16:24 And Socrates, you know, this is not a problem that's exclusive to our own age. He was put to
00:16:28 death for inquiring fundamentally, right? But, you know, somebody like Francis Witteson, who's
00:16:35 asking questions, Peter Boghossian or others, the level of antipathy there is to genuine inquiry,
00:16:43 not universally, but amongst broad sections of the post-secondary institutions that are there.
00:16:52 I talk with high schoolers who are not in the program yet and their parents about what they're
00:16:57 experiencing in schooling and the level of difficulty there is in engaging with dialogue
00:17:02 with their peers. And for most of them, they find it almost impossible to really have a substantive
00:17:08 conversation about anything that could even halfway be considered inflammatory and it's not
00:17:19 even the right word. But it's even asking basic questions and getting down to that level.
00:17:25 A lot of the classrooms are not really structured in a way that enables people to explore in that
00:17:30 fashion. And that's basically all that we are doing is we're reading the text and trying to
00:17:35 understand you know plutarch's lives or uh you know the odyssey or the dialogues of plato or
00:17:41 democracy in america by de tocqueville or the american state papers whatever like we're reading
00:17:46 very rich literature uh and different books from history and talking about universals of human
00:17:54 experience and asking fundamental questions about the great ideas and mortimer adler and others put
00:18:01 out different lists of i think he the most recent version of the great books set they had 102 great
00:18:07 ideas like justice and beauty and truth and good and evil well what are these things to be able to
00:18:14 think critically i think you have to get down to the basics of you know again to what steve was
00:18:20 saying what does it mean to be a happy person what does it mean to be a good person you know
00:18:26 and then things that are more for our own experience like thinking well practically
00:18:30 how am i going about through life they're like intellectual questions um so to speak
00:18:38 and then there are questions we have to answer very practically in our own lives when we maybe
00:18:44 do something that we regret doing well how do you come back from that you have somebody who
00:18:49 passed away like a child in your family how do you deal with that that's not critical thinking
00:18:53 exactly but it's like the search for wisdom how do we deal with the world in which we live and
00:18:59 perhaps that as a fundamental intellectual goal the highest good of the mind wisdom is kind of
00:19:06 what we're trying to help in culture and students is by asking basic questions to be able to explore
00:19:14 different stories and ideas that have resonated with people for all of human history and then to
00:19:22 And to be able to help them enter into that great conversation, to be not passive recipients,
00:19:27 but active recipients from these writings, the best thoughts of the men and women of
00:19:31 the past, to be able to actively receive that, to think about it in their own minds.
00:19:37 And then to be able to, well, do I agree with this?
00:19:39 What are they saying?
00:19:40 To try to understand it and then to make assessments about it, to think about it from a very basic
00:19:45 level and then to come to their own beliefs about the way that the world is and the way
00:19:51 that they ought to live their lives. I mean, that is critical thinking, right? Like, how
00:19:55 do you do that? And I don't see that. Unfortunately, I had the great honor of being with Steve
00:20:03 for four years. And I mean, my own experience, I hope I'm thinking critically, perhaps not
00:20:11 all the time. But being in the program for that time was
00:20:16 of tremendous benefit to me. I often tell people that it was the best part of
00:20:21 the entirety of my education, from elementary through post-secondary. It was the most influential,
00:20:28 most substantive part of that education. Why?
00:20:36 Steve and Dr. Taylor and other people, I knew that they cared about what I thought that
00:20:44 they took me and my ideas seriously. That we were, you know, I was 14. Some people might
00:20:49 look at a 14 year old and say, well, what kind of thoughts do they have that are substantial?
00:20:54 But they treated me with seriousness, which is how I want to treat the people who are
00:20:58 a part of the program, whether they're high schoolers or others, that your thoughts matter.
00:21:03 What you say matters, how you live matters.
00:21:06 And that we're kind of on this journey together, exploring these ideas to hopefully help you
00:21:12 become more wise and a better person.
00:21:16 seems like a pretty big goal for a program perhaps um but that was my experience that's why i came
00:21:21 away with someone has to do it yeah and since you've gone through that you will you have that
00:21:30 intimate knowledge of how to structure in a way to kind of capture that same spark for others and
00:21:37 one thing i've kind of i was thinking as you're unpacking that was there's a lot of people that
00:21:44 they do live an unexamined life in a way and even highly educated people run the risk of
00:21:51 kind of falling into either a tunnel vision or a routine that doesn't force them to contend with
00:21:58 ideas outside of the things that they really know well we've kind of chatted about this on the
00:22:03 channel before you you do have hyper specialization through our education system in a way that
00:22:10 you get people maybe you'll get a kidney doctor who's really great at everything that the kidney
00:22:17 has to do with but outside of that they're not looking at these systems
00:22:22 so you get people siloed in both their education but also siloed in in these kind of groups these
00:22:29 bubbles through the online world which we are it's hard not to fall into these kind of algorithmic
00:22:36 bubbles but it's takes a lot of intention to be aware of the bubbles that you're in
00:22:42 and to step outside of them so i i do see a need to stress test ideas in a guided setting
00:22:49 to examine them but also like as we try to pull people out of some of these bubbles it's worth
00:22:55 noting like we're not the first people to go through some of these experiences some of the
00:23:00 things and these emotions that we're feeling right now that's not unique to 2026 right and so
00:23:08 taking that lens back to the greats i think is also a very it grounds it in this very real
00:23:16 human experience which pulls us out of this tunnel vision if that makes sense
00:23:22 no it totally does i mean i think it's a great counterbalance to for instance reading the news
00:23:27 which I think can be a beneficial thing, knowing what's going on in the world today, but to have
00:23:31 this ballast in place where you're able to have a historical perspective and understand the roots
00:23:36 of different ideas. We have different conceptions of what government should be. Where did those come
00:23:44 from? Are you familiar with the philosophical underpinnings for them? Do you know how to
00:23:51 challenge them what are other options i mean people have thought about these things and being
00:23:57 able to read through them on their own terms right not interpreted from somebody else but to read the
00:24:03 source texts themselves at length and then to be able to talk about them and try to in your own
00:24:10 mind come to what you actually think and believe about the world and to change your mind um i mean
00:24:16 is a big deal. And part of what we're talking about is really liberal education. People
00:24:22 talk about like a liberal arts degree, but to be liberally educated, or, you know, the
00:24:28 word liberal means free, right? Is that you're trying to help people be free to think about
00:24:34 again, as I was talking about earlier, the doctor that you're talking about, it have
00:24:39 that very specialized knowledge. It is a beautiful thing, right? But everybody has common human
00:24:46 problems and situations that they'll need to deal with. And where do we learn how to
00:24:51 deal with that other than through life and with family? You know, having broad exposure
00:24:56 to past experiences of other people is certainly one very good way to understand how to deal
00:25:01 with situations that we come through today. And that we're not so terminally unique and
00:25:05 that our sufferings are not the first time in the history of mankind that they've occurred.
00:25:09 Right? To have that kind of perspective is very helpful. Yeah.
00:25:14 a great thought and and i'd love to i'd love to bring steve back in here on on this question um
00:25:19 steve i know i know you're still a young man but your your your uh your timing your time with this
00:25:28 program betrays your experience and so i wanted to get your opinion on um when you started doing
00:25:35 this in the i guess in the late 90s or early 2000s you know were were people having the same
00:25:43 sort of conversations about, um, the gaps and the, the, the lack of, um, you know, people talk
00:25:52 about now, uh, and you know, I, I have a young family we were talking about earlier. My, I'm
00:25:58 lucky enough to have a wife who, who is a former elementary school teacher. So we, we are very
00:26:02 strongly considering homeschooling our kids when they, when they come of age, if we can, you know,
00:26:06 make it work financially, like that would be perfect for me. Like I'm, I'm so confident that
00:26:10 our kids would have a great resource at home. And I know that they would be insulated in a way from
00:26:17 some of the, I mean, I guess if you wanted to be charitable about it, the thematic direction
00:26:25 of modern education in many ways. Were people, you know, almost 30 years ago having the same
00:26:31 sort of conversations about uh the the trajectory of of uh of public education
00:26:36 well yeah in my experience uh i mean i i believe or not i can even remember when i was in school
00:26:47 myself uh i believe in high school yeah in high school and people uh education has been i'd say
00:26:57 in the latter, really, in the latter part of the 20th century to the present, so many
00:27:05 people talk about education, and everybody who talks about education, they talk about
00:27:11 how important it is, and, but if you ask, well, what is it, what is education? We were
00:27:21 talking about that earlier, John was saying, we often, we don't know what we think we know
00:27:26 until we try to explain it.
00:27:29 St. Augustine's got a great story about that.
00:27:31 He said in his confessions, he says,
00:27:34 if somebody asks me what time is,
00:27:39 they ask me if I know what it is,
00:27:41 I say, oh, of course I know what time is.
00:27:43 Oh, well, what is it?
00:27:44 He said, all of a sudden, I don't have any idea what time is.
00:27:48 And it's kind of the same with education.
00:27:51 People give you cliches and pat answers,
00:27:56 But if you simply inquire, you know, what they mean by these things, they, for the most part, in my opinion, they really don't know.
00:28:09 When we were talking earlier about the experience of what we talk about in the classroom, I always tell people what we talk about are common human ideas and common human experiences.
00:28:23 And this notion of being familiar, I mean, we were criticized sharply when we started the program, you know, saying, well, 14-year-olds, they can't be reading Plato and Aristotle.
00:28:40 Well, it turns out they can, and they can understand what they're reading, at least to some degree.
00:28:47 Does anybody, I would assert that nobody understands everything that they encounter in these works.
00:28:55 But anyway, this scene in the Iliad came to mind, and I don't know why,
00:29:02 but at one part of the, in the story of the Iliad, the Trojans are defending their city.
00:29:11 And Hector is the primary defender.
00:29:15 he's the one who's leading the defense of troy and in the midst of uh the battles and such
00:29:24 in some ground time that hector had he's he meets with his wife on the walls of the city
00:29:30 and they have their young son just almost a baby astyanax there and andromache his wife i'm using
00:29:39 this in his example of what we talked about in the classes and and james mentioned the emotions
00:29:45 earlier and i'm going to bring that into this example um anyway i'll draw on john case asking
00:29:54 hector to stop exposing himself to so much danger when he's out in the field fighting she said she
00:30:01 She said, stay back here near the walls and you can direct the fighting from here.
00:30:06 Well, one question is, is Andromache out of line for suggesting to her husband to not expose himself to so much danger? 0.96
00:30:22 what are her or on the other hand is she not only uh in line so to speak does she have a duty
00:30:31 to talk to her husband to ask him about this sort of thing she has a son
00:30:35 so there's a layer of obligations here does does andromache have obligations to her son
00:30:41 does she have obligations to hector does she have obligations to her neighbors and fellow citizens
00:30:48 well she i would say i would suggest that she has obligations to all those people well what's
00:30:57 the hierarchy of the obligations what comes first and you ask the students a question like that
00:31:03 that's a lot to chew on and most 14 year olds haven't just haven't thought that way and then
00:31:12 And you say, well, what about Hector?
00:31:14 Doesn't he have obligations to his wife and to his son?
00:31:18 And he has obligations to the city, doesn't he?
00:31:20 Well, what's his first obligation?
00:31:23 Is it to his wife or is it to the city,
00:31:29 the country, so to speak?
00:31:32 And there's a great question, well, what is the country?
00:31:34 What is meant by that phrase?
00:31:37 Well, this is an awful lot to,
00:31:39 There's hours and hours worth of conversation there for these teenagers to discuss marital obligations, parental obligations, community obligations.
00:31:53 And how do you balance all these things?
00:31:56 What are the principles involved and how do you apply them here?
00:32:01 Anyway, I mentioned that.
00:32:02 Oh, and the emotions thing.
00:32:04 And along with this idea, it ties in with learning to love what we ought to love, learning
00:32:11 to love what's true, what's good, what's beautiful.
00:32:14 Education isn't just an intellectual experience.
00:32:17 It's not just an intellectual endeavor.
00:32:21 It's because we humans aren't simply intellectuals.
00:32:25 We have passions, we have appetites, we have emotions, all these things being good in themselves,
00:32:33 but they need to be ordered properly ordered by reason um and so does hector love his wife yes he
00:32:42 does does he love the city yes he does does he love his son yes he does but these loves
00:32:50 some goods are greater than other goods that's why we have a hierarchy of obligations
00:32:55 because there's a hierarchy of goods some things are more good than others
00:33:00 And those kinds of conversations talking about, sorry to jump in here, Steve, just
00:33:09 as one example, I think happen, but happen rarely in school.
00:33:21 So like, what kind of education do you want for your children?
00:33:25 I think people have talked about that forever.
00:33:29 you were asking Mike about, well, have people had the same concerns? In Steve's time, that
00:33:36 I can't comment to. I mean, as a father, definitely now I have those concerns. I mean, my son
00:33:44 is 12 now, so he'll be starting the program within a couple of years. But not even just
00:33:52 political questions that are tied to education, but what Steve was talking about earlier,
00:33:58 How does your school or the teachers, how do they conceive of their job, of their role?
00:34:03 To what end are they directing your child?
00:34:04 Is it to be an activist?
00:34:06 Is it just to get a good job?
00:34:08 Is it to be a specialist?
00:34:10 As you were talking earlier, I mean, I think any responsible parent should be asking those
00:34:14 kinds of questions.
00:34:15 It's like, okay, well, what is a likely outcome of my child's education, right?
00:34:21 What is the likely outcome of the institution or otherwise that I'm sending my child to
00:34:26 that they're receiving their education within um you know there may be certain types of questions
00:34:32 i mean my son was just at the calgary classical academy he's homeschooling now um but i mean their
00:34:40 waitlist is just one example i mean it's i think over 5 000 waitlisted students uh between the
00:34:48 three institutions and they've got enrollment of i don't know what number it's small in comparison
00:34:53 And people are asking these questions, they're looking for alternatives, they're looking
00:34:56 for good alternatives.
00:35:00 And I think that that's part of what we're offering is to be able to give people the
00:35:05 means.
00:35:06 I mean, we haven't talked about some of the practical quote unquote benefits of the program
00:35:12 like that.
00:35:13 You can get college credit in high school, which is amazing.
00:35:16 You can get like half a university degree done.
00:35:19 I know, uh, a relative of mine who went through the program and got her degree by 19.
00:35:25 Like why are people talking about the aims of education?
00:35:27 Why are people, uh, you know, she got her undergraduate when she was 19 years old and
00:35:31 then went on to do a master's before her peers were done, they're undergraduates, right?
00:35:36 Uh, you know, aside from some of the more, uh, philosophical questions about education,
00:35:42 I mean, are you happy with the way that the education is being conducted and the
00:35:48 results that you're getting as a parent, right? Wouldn't be nice to be able to have your child
00:35:54 get indoctrinated a little bit less at college as an example. And I say not every institution is the
00:36:02 same, but that happens enough that parents are concerned about it, not just where their child is
00:36:09 for secondary education, but for post-secondary. Are they going to lose their kids if they spend
00:36:14 all this time and love nurturing and helping raise to be the young people that they are?
00:36:18 I mean, there are a lot of other practical benefits as well.
00:36:22 Steve, I am actually curious that we were talking before the podcast started about you
00:36:29 and Pat kind of kicking up the program.
00:36:32 I mean, this is a bit self-indulgent of me.
00:36:35 Perhaps I hope it's a benefit to listeners too.
00:36:39 What was that experience?
00:36:40 You said you got some criticism at the time, but Pat had a young family as did you, Pat
00:36:45 Carmack.
00:36:46 What was that experience like?
00:36:48 kind of leaping into the unknown in a great way and well i'll try to be really brief here but uh
00:36:56 yeah don't be brief okay yeah as i'd mentioned uh i had left the seminary uh earlier and i
00:37:06 i fortunately uh i got well and uh ended up getting married and starting family and uh
00:37:14 uh anyway uh as i mentioned pat he married later and when his kids got to uh school age he called
00:37:25 me up but what are you doing for education how'd you because at that time you know now there's i
00:37:31 don't know how many homeschool programs there are out there yeah no idea but when karen and i started
00:37:37 there weren't any, or virtually none. So I just started doing research. I lived in the
00:37:46 library basement, looking through their old books down there and school curricula that
00:37:54 they had archived. Anyway, Pat decided he didn't like any of it. By this time, there
00:38:03 were some homeschooling programs out there he decided he didn't like any of them so he decided
00:38:09 to just uh put together one himself so his aim uh basically was to buy all the english grammar
00:38:20 texts all the math texts all the history texts go through them not just on his own
00:38:26 and determine which are the best, whether they cost a great deal or cost very little.
00:38:33 He just wanted the best.
00:38:35 Anyway, he'd kind of gone through all that, and he called me up.
00:38:40 I had told him, I said, well, he gave me an idea of what he was going to do.
00:38:44 And I said, okay, well, if you get that all put together, give me a call.
00:38:48 So he did.
00:38:50 And I decided to get into it with him.
00:38:55 And I became kind of the public face.
00:38:59 I traveled around to conferences around the country giving talks and that sort of thing as we were trying to just get it off the ground.
00:39:07 How did the Great Books Program specifically emerge from that?
00:39:11 Because you had some interactions with Mortimer Adler towards the end of his life.
00:39:16 But where did the Great Books specifically?
00:39:18 Because there's a whole Angelicum, which if people don't know, is an excellent curriculum beyond the Great Books Program.
00:39:25 which is for children 14 years and older. They also have a good books program, Logic for Children,
00:39:29 Philosophy for Children, and a bunch of other programs. They've got a full K, actually nursery,
00:39:35 I think, nursery through basically baccalaureate program, which has been developed over that time
00:39:42 in many, many partnerships with different institutions. So definitely check out Angelicum.
00:39:47 But yeah, how did the Great Books program start specifically?
00:39:50 Well, the Great Books Program is the end in view, so to speak, of all the other courses that we offer. The Great Books Program is the heart and soul of it all. So all that leads to the Great Books and this work of inquiry that we are into in the classes.
00:40:13 But anyway, that's how it all started.
00:40:17 And 2000, year 2000, the fall of 2000 was our first year when we started.
00:40:27 Yeah.
00:40:29 James, go ahead.
00:40:30 Yeah, definitely. So, John, you're talking about some of the issues with traditional schooling, and we're seeing kind of a pattern of you've got multiple institutions that seem to be in an alignment.
00:40:50 They all have, I wouldn't say liberal, it's more of a leftist, captured by very, very progressive leftist ideas.
00:40:59 Some people say woke, and we could kind of wrap that up with more of a ideas that favor grievance and oppression dynamics as a, like, they attribute any equality, inequality to oppression dynamics.
00:41:16 So rather than the liberal sense of like being accepting of ideas and being open to exploring all of that, which seems to be strange that those on the right are now more open to ideas that don't always fit their kind of worldview.
00:41:36 So, with institutional dominance comes the need for parallel institutions.
00:41:46 And I noticed that you are also going to be at a conference coming up that we are at.
00:41:51 We are at the Capitalism and Morality in Calgary.
00:41:57 I believe it's September 11th and 12th.
00:42:01 That's right.
00:42:02 So, you're a speaker there.
00:42:03 Frigus Harchman, who's heading that up.
00:42:05 But yeah, Fergus Hodgson's friend of the channel, wonderful guy, and he's pushing towards these parallel institutions.
00:42:14 And I am very happy to see many people seeing the need to develop this side of things.
00:42:24 Let it be supporting young minds and developing that side of things or supporting even the need to like.
00:42:32 some of the supporting institutions around
00:42:36 like where do people
00:42:40 go to have events and
00:42:42 right now there's still kind of a bias there
00:42:44 or are there support
00:42:46 groups for like if somebody wants to
00:42:49 if they have
00:42:50 if they want to get organized and they want political goals
00:42:52 there's plenty of support groups on the left
00:42:54 but not so much on the right
00:42:56 and if you want to make real
00:42:59 change it takes a collection
00:43:01 of
00:43:01 all these puzzle pieces together and change doesn't happen instantly but you're planting
00:43:08 these seeds that will ultimately unfold into like better people equipped to make change
00:43:15 in a more effective way yeah yeah if i can tell you a few things that you're bringing up together
00:43:21 this network of intermediary organizations having this rich you know individual at the top
00:43:29 and government or individual at the bottom, perhaps separate, disengaged from other people,
00:43:37 like kind of individualized, atomized individual, people might call it. And then like a collectivist
00:43:46 government first, everything is done by the government. This is like an in-between in order
00:43:51 to have effective movement in any direction. I mean, we're social creatures and being able to
00:43:57 interact and be in community with each other to learn from each other and then there's also
00:44:02 you know political reasons but i don't want to like dilute everything to the political
00:44:08 more than just that right we need rich good beautiful communities that we're making so
00:44:16 i think there's a lot that's going on with different conferences vergis uh is definitely
00:44:21 doing quite a bit on that um i think the first bit of the question that you're asking was about
00:44:27 like this is an alternative to some of the more you could call critical theory first schools of
00:44:35 thought. I'm not going to decry the entirety of the education I received. I was actually in an
00:44:42 education program at the U of C and left because of what I saw as malformation that was going on
00:44:50 for teachers fundamentally, and that that's a lot of it was going into the system. Now,
00:44:54 perhaps some people are more resilient to that but at least from what i'm seeing there and other
00:45:00 schools of education that is often um what's happening and people are you know i mentioned
00:45:07 the calgary classical academy earlier you've got many many homeschoolers cobit certainly increased
00:45:11 homeschooling numbers at least temporarily a lot people are finding ways to be in community
00:45:17 uh together i think that there are a lot of different responses this is one
00:45:21 um you know with what i'm doing with the program i want to help enable that through having a
00:45:26 bookstore in town as well that it can be like a seedbed so to speak for these different
00:45:31 intermediate organizations and groups that people can have they have a space where people can engage
00:45:36 in free dialogue with one another uh but i'm not sure well just tying a few things i hope it wasn't
00:45:46 directly a question part of that was just my my thoughts on loading but um i i see the need for
00:45:53 multiple different organizations but also i think two things might happen and they might both happen
00:46:01 you might have success stories in parallel institutions unfold and people see the benefits
00:46:08 and then either more parallel institutions come over that they become the dominant
00:46:13 institutions or they see the benefits of a meth of like of a method of teaching or
00:46:21 whatever's happening on the outside that there the demand is forces the current institutions to adopt
00:46:28 that or to revise in a way that has that same results and it's hard to know what direction
00:46:34 it would go to like i imagine you'd get a little bit of both but i'm curious if you have any
00:46:40 Any thoughts on that?
00:46:41 I don't have any prognostications on what I think is going to happen in education.
00:46:44 Hard to predict things, but yeah.
00:46:45 Yeah.
00:46:46 I can see where there are pressure points, at least in Alberta.
00:46:50 I've been, either myself or for my son, I've gone through public education, private with
00:46:57 the charter school system, homeschooling.
00:46:59 I mean, I've been a teacher in a variety of those settings.
00:47:03 I mean, I'm currently a substitute at a private school that uses Socratic method.
00:47:08 like another response, Acton Academy, which started here in Calgary recently.
00:47:16 Yeah. I mean, I think that the current government wants there to be alternatives. I think there's
00:47:21 some political reasons around the unions and having, you know, good alternatives where
00:47:27 institutions that are perhaps more ideologically aligned, not to, again, like they're trying to
00:47:31 give parents choice fundamentally, which is what people should be allowing government,
00:47:37 I don't think should be interfering in a lot of these things. And the worst if people think that
00:47:41 education is going to pot in the public sphere. And I'm not sure that's a universal thing. I don't
00:47:48 want to put that big of a mark. I think there are some people who are trying awfully hard
00:47:56 to do education in the public system well. I mean, I've met and know some of them.
00:48:01 But as a trend, I think that there's a lot that's not going well for identity politics
00:48:09 and some of the things that I think a lot of people are familiar with.
00:48:14 And the pressure is going to continue, the seeking out of alternatives is going to continue
00:48:18 to be present.
00:48:21 And if you have something really truly innovative that causes fundamental reassessment.
00:48:27 So for instance, Jordan Peterson's talked about why is it the case that the teacher
00:48:33 certification process is handled in a central fashion, right?
00:48:40 Like couldn't you de-professionalize the teacher profession, the teaching profession,
00:48:46 and allow basically schools to hire who they thought would qualify?
00:48:49 I mean, Steve, I don't think you've got an education degree.
00:48:52 You're not a certificated teacher, but you've been teaching very well for 30 years.
00:49:00 I'm not a certificated teacher, but people hire me either privately or for other reasons
00:49:05 because they see that what I do is valuable, right?
00:49:10 So I mean, I don't know if that's going to be reassessed in Alberta or elsewhere.
00:49:14 I think there are some movements on that in the States, but yeah, no, definitely in Alberta,
00:49:20 I mean, we've got the charter school system.
00:49:21 I think that's kind of within the public sphere to some extent, but it's a good outlet, a good way that people are seeking alternatives, types of schooling that they agree with, right, for their children.
00:49:36 Yeah, John, and people, I think, in Canada, especially, I mean, especially recently and maybe in the last 10, 15 years specifically, have a very bad case of credentialism in many fields, you know, where they believe that, you know, unless somebody has, you know, this particular string of letters after their name or before their name, then they're, you know, you're not qualified to do certain things.
00:49:59 And that's just just simply not the case. You know, I wanted to just briefly mention, I think I may Steve and John had had, you know, similar childhood teen teen years to you, gentlemen, where, you know, I was like my education is in philosophy.
00:50:16 Actually, I have a philosophy degree from the U of A.
00:50:19 I was a very poor student.
00:50:22 I just scraped by.
00:50:23 But I was super interested.
00:50:25 I was just a bad student.
00:50:26 And, you know, I was young.
00:50:28 But what I credit it with is it was teaching me how to think.
00:50:33 You know, even if I don't remember all the works I read.
00:50:36 And, you know, I just, you know, B's and C's get degrees, as they say, right?
00:50:40 I still really do value what I learned.
00:50:43 And I, and I got out of it in, um, 2012, 2013.
00:50:47 So kind of before the, the real sharp turn into, uh, into identity politics and, and
00:50:53 a lot of, um, sort of maybe more toxic leftist, uh, ideology entering the system.
00:50:59 So, so that was, you know, lucky for me.
00:51:01 But when I was a teen, you know, I was, you know, 13, 14, I was that guy too, you know,
00:51:06 looking up, you know, buying the, the, using my, you know, little part-time job money and
00:51:12 allowance money and stuff to buy little philosophy compendium books, you know, from, from Indigo and
00:51:17 whatever. Like I was super interested in philosophy and I wished that there was more option in my
00:51:23 school to kind of just get a primer on, you know, some of the greats, you know, the, the Greeks and
00:51:28 the, you know, the, the continental philosophers, just, just something, you know, and there really
00:51:32 wasn't, um, maybe to both you, Steve and John, if you can, if you can, uh, to people listening, like
00:51:39 what sort of kid uh has the ability to enter this program like do you have to be a you know do you
00:51:45 have to have a certain level of it like do you have to pass any tests like is it is it is it um
00:51:51 restrictive in in any way like that like what what sort of family would would put their child
00:51:56 in this program that's a good question excuse me yeah it is a good question uh it's really for
00:52:03 just about anybody. The primary qualification is really not one's academic background.
00:52:14 I would say it would be
00:52:20 social maturity. If one, for instance, sometimes we'll get people, excuse me, they have a 10 year
00:52:30 old 11 year old 12 year old reading at a college level which is not unusual uh to to encounter that
00:52:38 in homeschool kids however um a 10 year old and a 12 year old don't have typically they don't have
00:52:47 the emotional and social maturity than someone 14 or 15. those are really big years between there
00:52:55 And the kinds of conversations that 14- and 15-year-olds have, and that's just, you know, in the first year of the program, by the time they're 17, 18, still in the program, these are conversations that 10- and 12-year-olds aren't going to profit from as much as they would if they wait until they're 14 or 15 to get into it.
00:53:19 So, no, there's no academic background test.
00:53:24 The question or what I would say to parents is basically what I just said to you.
00:53:30 It's emotional and social maturity.
00:53:33 In ordinary, normal, what I would call normal 14-year-olds to 15-year-olds, they can read Homer.
00:53:41 They can read Herodotus, Thucydides.
00:53:44 They can read Plato, Aristotle.
00:53:46 They can discuss these things.
00:53:49 Yeah. I mean, I'd maybe make just one comment on that, that if you've, I guess slightly
00:53:59 different than the social emotional maturity, having a basic reading level, if somebody
00:54:09 was scrolling all the time and had never read a book, they may find it difficult. It's not
00:54:15 Yeah, I'm just giving an example there, I'm sure, people listening.
00:54:21 Yeah, I didn't mean to dismiss having a good academic background.
00:54:25 I mean, that's a great thing.
00:54:27 I'm just saying that we get people from all kinds of backgrounds.
00:54:30 I'll give you one quick story.
00:54:32 This was, oh, probably 15 years ago, and there was an inner city school in Washington, D.C.,
00:54:38 and I got a call from the principal one day inquiring about the great books,
00:54:44 And she said, frankly, our high school students, their academic background is abysmal.
00:54:53 She said they couldn't write an essay, if you ask them to, and so on.
00:55:00 And we talked about them.
00:55:01 She wanted to know if they could enter the program.
00:55:07 And I left the decision up to her and the parents.
00:55:11 and they decided to do it and they struggled mightily with the reading they struggled mightily
00:55:19 with the writing but they were terrific in the classroom very collegial very cordial
00:55:27 very well-mannered they were wonderful in the classroom at the end of the year
00:55:33 because it was really really difficult on the academic side you know the reading and the writing
00:55:39 basically and she asked them she asked the principal she asked the students
00:55:45 we can do this again next year if you guys want to or we can just move on to do something else
00:55:54 because we know how difficult it was for you and all the students wanted to come back and do it
00:55:59 again so they did so yeah it's it's much better to have a good academic background in the basic
00:56:08 literary skills you know reading writing uh than to not have it but if you don't have that
00:56:16 good background yeah you're going to struggle more going to be more difficult but uh but one
00:56:22 of those things where the where the right attitude and the right constitution can can take you far
00:56:26 yeah morten radler did a similar experiment uh they recorded this a series of uh sessions that
00:56:35 did with inner city students, I think in like, I think it was probably the seventies or the eighties.
00:56:41 They had just a typical student come in, they put them on a bus and they brought, and he's kind of,
00:56:49 I don't know if the godfather is the right word, but he certainly helped popularize the great books
00:56:55 to people today. And Steve and I both, I'm sure owe him a great debt of gratitude for that.
00:57:02 that. But he did kind of what Steve was talking about. And perhaps not the program that we're
00:57:10 doing, but similar that they're reading these texts. You know, I guess people consider them
00:57:17 difficult texts, but source texts from history, serious stuff, good stuff. And they had not
00:57:23 been exposed to this at all before. The first week maybe found it a little bit, you know,
00:57:27 difficult but you can see that they've recorded this over the weeks that they're doing it just
00:57:33 the way that they're lighting up and they're talking about the works and these topics what
00:57:39 they had discussed in the classroom as they're going home on the bus and after the classroom
00:57:44 is done i don't know if people a lot of people know if they've been out of education for a while
00:57:50 what the typical high school experience looks like for students in alberta i'll give a slight
00:57:56 insight into that typically in a high school program students would read in a given year
00:58:06 like a play and two to three other books a lot of that engages with a critical theory first type
00:58:14 approach of analyzing and decomposing these texts and discussing them sometimes and writing papers
00:58:24 and these kinds of things, personal responses, et cetera, a lot of it aimed at diploma exam
00:58:29 preparation. But over the course of a given year, they're reading three to four books.
00:58:38 That's their exposure. And the type of book, you know, might be some of the, you know,
00:58:44 they'd read a play of Shakespeare as an example, Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, right? Maybe a more
00:58:50 modern book or two that's present i don't know what the the full set of curriculum i was talking
00:58:59 sorry uh with a principal of mine who had taught me in grade seven and grade eight so just before
00:59:04 i entered the program with steve she had taught me english at a school in calgary and i was talking
00:59:10 with her about a month ago and she was describing how her daughter was coming home and explaining
00:59:14 meaning that she was reading a book about a Black man who is incorrectly accused of violating
00:59:25 a girl and that there's a court case around it.
00:59:27 You probably would think, well, that's To Kill a Mockingbird.
00:59:30 But it wasn't.
00:59:31 It was some modern rendition that was literally far, far worse than that.
00:59:37 So all that to say, the amount of reading is not a ton.
00:59:42 The level of discussion, I would say, generally is not as deep.
00:59:47 And the type of analysis that is typically undergone from what I've seen within the classroom
00:59:52 experience for high schoolers and looking at the course of studies, and then just from
00:59:58 talking with families, is a lot of it is kind of a critical theory first approach and breaking
01:00:04 apart these texts.
01:00:06 If you were to compare, people can take a look at the full course load that we've got
01:00:10 for all four years of the program.
01:00:12 we start in grade nine or when the children are 14 if they're in high school or anybody can take
01:00:18 it at an older age but they're reading typically about 30 books a year so it's a little over 120
01:00:25 books over the course of the program and they're doing the two-hour discussion so i guess this is
01:00:30 kind of what is the program i'm explaining it now um so yeah about 30 books a year some of those are
01:00:38 long excerpts so we do the history of the peloponnesian war by thucydides in two weeks
01:00:44 but we don't read the entirety of it many of the books like the iliad and the odyssey would
01:00:48 read the entirety of those books but over the course between the plays so some shorter
01:00:54 texts we might read two to three plays in a week or these longer texts broken down
01:00:59 across multiple weeks or in a single week depending on the work it's about 30 30 works
01:01:05 over the course of the year and then if they're on the high school track they're doing the two
01:01:11 hour discussion they're writing a couple papers every term and then there's an oral examination
01:01:17 and then if they're on the college track beyond that they can get six university credits so
01:01:22 two uh college courses equivalent per semester so six per year so it's quite a bit you know when
01:01:29 they're in high school they can get just through this 48 university credits over the two over the
01:01:34 four years um i guess what the essays get longer steve i think and then they have responses that
01:01:43 they're writing but virtually everything else is the same well i'm missing anything the students
01:01:50 high school and college students college track students they're mixed in the classes
01:01:55 so the classes are the same the college students in addition to the two
01:02:00 essays per semester which are longer than the non-college track students write they also have
01:02:08 a weekly paper that they do which typically they have to write out responses to eight to
01:02:17 12 questions that they're given having to do with the text or text for that week so they do a lot
01:02:23 more writing yeah for sure but and john is this reading um in obviously it's it will be different
01:02:31 in the online versus the in in classroom programs but is this is there like a group component to
01:02:36 this or is this like personal reading time and then you're reflecting maybe at the end of a week
01:02:40 on yeah a great question yeah so uh the the reading is individual and then like so for
01:02:47 For instance, if we were going through the Odyssey that they would read this in our program
01:02:53 over two weeks.
01:02:54 So we'd have two classes devoted.
01:02:56 So the first 12 and then the second 12 books, if my memory serves, it's 24, I think overall.
01:03:03 They would do that reading individually.
01:03:07 We have a poem that they would read typically before the class, but we read at the beginning
01:03:13 of class as well.
01:03:15 And then that's a two hour discussion.
01:03:17 So we're talking and basically our job as moderators is to help fuel the conversation
01:03:23 with good questions.
01:03:24 And then over time, enable the students to carry on the conversation, especially over
01:03:28 the four years, more and more and more independently.
01:03:33 So we're enabling them to really be the Socratic questioners themselves and that we're guiding.
01:03:39 We're not doing a lecture.
01:03:40 We're not teaching the text.
01:03:44 Our job is to ask questions of the students and of their thoughts and to challenge their
01:03:50 thoughts from a variety of angles and to help them think through these different things.
01:03:56 And then also to just, you know, encounter this in a community together.
01:04:00 So in person, it's basically the online version, but we're meeting up, which I think a lot
01:04:04 of people are just very hungry for is a deep thirst for real community.
01:04:10 And this is one way on an intellectual level, like, you know, you can have meals together
01:04:15 and all these other things are all different ways to have community, but this kind of meeting
01:04:19 of minds and talking through these books on such an extended basis, you get to know each
01:04:24 other quite well.
01:04:26 And then you're able to have this shared reference, right?
01:04:31 You're able to read these books syntopically.
01:04:34 Syntopically, I guess that's what Murmur Adler uses as a term.
01:04:39 able to read and discuss not just a single text, but it in reference to all the other texts that
01:04:43 you've read in the program, and then talk about these large trends in history. And then just,
01:04:48 you know, what do different people say about, again, whatever topic is being brought up that
01:04:53 week with the questioning that's engaged in and the discussion. So that's kind of the way that
01:04:59 it's structured. Awesome. Right on. Well, James, I don't know, did you have, did you have any other
01:05:07 questions for our for our guests that maybe something we didn't touch on or uh or anything
01:05:12 to uh to add no i think we've covered uh quite a bit unless there is something uh and mike always
01:05:21 likes asking um like is there anything in this episode that you wished we would have asked
01:05:27 that we didn't like didn't already ask or cover yeah or any any shout outs that you'd like to
01:05:33 make as well please anyone else named like mortimer or some some cool name like like i would
01:05:40 expect somebody named mortimer to do something very important academically you know is there like
01:05:45 i don't know an ebenezer or something is
01:05:48 uh steve any shout outs well i i mean education is just such a big topic and
01:05:56 and uh you know coming uh while i was waiting to do the this uh podcast with you you two gentlemen
01:06:07 uh i was wondering well you know because i i looked at your program list and i saw that it was
01:06:14 you know primarily uh about what you got going on in alberta by the way i i think saint augustine
01:06:20 would approve of what you're doing as far as succession goes he thought smaller was better
01:06:27 yeah politically in that regard so uh so i i commend you for your work in that and i hope
01:06:34 really hope you have a great deal of success there but um i had no idea what really what
01:06:43 you'd ask i figured there'd be some questions about education so um i don't really have any
01:06:50 Nothing really comes to mind.
01:06:52 I say, gee, I wish James would ask me this.
01:06:55 Or I wish Mike would ask me this.
01:06:56 I might say one thing.
01:06:58 This is a little bit off the wall.
01:07:00 But before I got into this, I remember I told you Pat called.
01:07:04 And I decided to jump into it.
01:07:06 Well, at the time, I had a building business.
01:07:09 And my partner, you look like his twin, Mike.
01:07:17 Of course, he's much older now.
01:07:18 but when we were doing it yeah you look remarkably like him well hey that's you know i i often get
01:07:26 uh confused for you know a strong uh uh um contractor you know i have i have that uh that
01:07:35 look about me you know that i i build things yeah yeah you're building something with the
01:07:41 podcast hey you guys are doing well we're trying we're trying here you know like it's
01:07:45 just you know casually sort of wrap things up here like the reason we got into this in the first
01:07:51 place like yeah we have we have really been focused the last you know year and a half or so
01:07:55 like i say on on alberta independence just because it's a you know it's an issue that's close to home
01:07:59 for us and we um we we often describe ourselves actually as as uh reformed liberals you know we
01:08:06 we grew up in the city and we're you know we have we're both musicians like we went to school
01:08:11 together actually we've known each other since grade seven we played on the same volleyball team
01:08:15 cool and uh and you know we we have circles that are are very uh arts you know based and so in
01:08:22 those communities it is very it is still very uh liberal and very leftist and and we've sort of
01:08:28 found ourselves uh you know going through covid and and all the subsequent you know social disaster
01:08:35 that that came from that in the last few years um sort of on the outs you know of our of our social
01:08:40 circle circles and and just having these discussions and and educating ourselves on things that uh you
01:08:47 know even even just just a handful of years ago we may have found you know intellectually distasteful
01:08:52 or or completely out of bounds you know has really opened us up to to communities and getting to
01:08:58 speak with people like you guys that we we couldn't have imagined a couple years ago when we started
01:09:02 doing this so it's it's just very cool that these are sort of where our you know our our paths kind
01:09:08 of you know where the the timeline sort of split and yeah it's just cool to to have to see people
01:09:14 doing cool stuff like this in the in in this age you know we we live in such a time of um you know
01:09:21 everything is very bite-sized and consumable and and and throw away and and to have guys that are
01:09:27 really focused on rediscovering and reigniting that passion for for all the wisdom that that
01:09:34 has existed in in in the western canon and in in literature you know going back thousands of years
01:09:39 is is very cool so that's that's my little my little monologue i guess well i think it's a
01:09:45 great thing that you guys find so many things in life interesting i mean the world's a fascinating
01:09:52 place and you can get interested in almost anything if you start to look into it so yeah i
01:10:00 i think that makes you guys more normal than most people like one or two things
01:10:08 you got a lot more going that's great yeah we need more um what james what was the term you used in
01:10:15 in some discussions uh deep generalist deep generalists yeah i love that yeah yeah we need
01:10:21 fewer specialists and more deep generalists so hey this has been awesome guys i i i really appreciate
01:10:27 the uh um you know the the knowledge about your your program we're going to obviously shout out
01:10:32 all of your links um we're going to direct people your way anyone you know we have a lot of listeners
01:10:37 a lot of viewers in calgary so hopefully we get uh we get you some signups john maybe we get a
01:10:42 little kickback we can discuss that after the episode uh and uh thanks for sharing your knowledge
01:10:49 guys and and we'd love to maybe we maybe we revisit this in a year and see you know how the
01:10:53 first year of, of the program has, has gone in, in person and reconvene and, and, and chat about
01:10:59 more, uh, more books. And then by then you will have seen the Odyssey and we can discuss, uh,
01:11:04 it's, it's, uh, thematic, uh, merits versus the book. Yeah. Interesting. If people are in Calgary,
01:11:11 feel free to visit as well. You can come on to the bookstore we got here and, uh, it'd be good
01:11:15 to see folks. So that's awesome. And thanks guys for having us on. That's awesome. Yeah.
01:11:19 Nice to talk to you.
01:11:21 You too.
01:11:22 Thanks for joining.
01:11:22 Thank you very much, sir.
01:11:23 Okay, guys.
01:11:24 Have a good evening.
01:11:25 Cheers.