Episodes
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
Science and Scientific Knowing with Dr. Scott Olsson
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
Tuesday Oct 24, 2023
We're regularly told that the only kind of knowing of which we can be certain is "scientific" knowing. What does that mean? How does it apply to the world and our everyday lives.
Mathematician Dr. Scott Olsson has thought and taught a great deal about the questions surrounding science and what it can--and can't--tell us about the world around us. Here are some ideas he brings to his Wyoming Catholic College students.
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Teaching the Old Testament with Dr. Jim Tonkowich
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
The theology curricular track at Wyoming Catholic College begins with "Salvation History in the Old Testament." The course is, for the most part, reading the narrative portions of the Old Testament from Genesis to Maccabees.
Dr. Jim Tonkowich has been teaching this freshman course this semester and shares some of the course's content and his own experience encountering the Old Testament with our students.
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Learning to Write Well with Dr. Tiffany Schubert
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
“Reading,” said Sir Francis Bacon, “maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
Student academic life at Wyoming Catholic College mirrors Bacon’s comment. Our students read the Great and Good books of our civilization and come to class prepared for what Bacon called “conference.” We would say conversation. And while writing is part of most courses, freshmen take "Trivium 101—Writing Truthfully."
This week's guest, Dr. Tiffany Schubert, finds teaching Trivium 101 a great pleasure.
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Homer’s ”Iliad” with Dr. Glenn Arbery
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
The Iliad, first of Homer’s great epics, tells the tale of the war between Greece and Troy as it unfolded on the plains outside that ancient city. And the focus of the tale is Achilleus, the greatest warrior on either side who, for most of the book, sits on the sidelines.
Dr. Glenn Arbery is both a scholar and teacher of The Iliad who, once again, is reading the epic with our Wyoming Catholic freshmen.
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Fall Outdoor Week and Rafting the Canyon of Lodore with Mr. Paul Milligan
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
Tuesday Sep 26, 2023
To graduate from Wyoming Catholic College, students need to spend at least ten weeks in the wilderness. That includes their three-week freshman expedition, a one-week freshman winter trip just after Christmas and six additional weeks over the next three years.
This week is Fall Outdoor Week at the college. Students are rafting, rock climbing, backpacking and fishing, and canyoneering.
Last week I spoke with a senior who told me she was going on a trip she had wanted to do since she heard about it freshman year: rafting the Green River through the treacherous Lodore Canyon in northwest Colorado. And I recalled a podcast I recorded a few years ago with Paul Milligan who had just returned from guiding a trip through that canyon.
Here’s what Paul had to say.
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Aristotle’s ”Nicomachean Ethics” with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
Tuesday Sep 19, 2023
“Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit,” wrote Aristotle at the beginning of his book on ethics, “is considered to aim at some good. Hence the good has rightly been defined as ‘that at which all things aim’.”
We all, Aristotle contends, aim at what we believe is the good. But how do we know what is truly good? And how is it possible as he tells us, that the way to aim at the good has to do with politics?
Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos is reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors. Here's what he had to say about the good.
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Wyoming Catholic College’s New President with Pres. Kyle Washut
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Tuesday Sep 12, 2023
Wyoming Catholic College has a new president, Kyle Washut. It seems fully appropriate that Prof. Washut, a native of Wyoming who has been part of the Wyoming Catholic College project since before the beginning of the college, should now take the helm.
In this podcast, President Washut tells us about the earliest days at the college as well as his hopes and plans for its future.
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
”Be Transformed”: Matriculation Address by President Kyle Washut
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
Tuesday Sep 05, 2023
The college year at Wyoming Catholic College ends with the formality and pomp of graduation as we award degrees and bid another class farewell. The year begins with another, largely-forgotten ceremony equally formal, meaningful, and full of academic pomp: Matriculation in which each new freshmen adds his or her signature to the matricula, the large, leather-bound book that contains the names and signatures of every Wyoming Catholic College student since the school’s inception.
This year’s ceremony, in addition to welcoming new students, President Glenn Arbery welcomed his successor, newly-appointed President Kyle Washut. Here are President Washut’s remarks to the class of 2027.
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Nathaniel Hawthorne begins his 1843 short story “The Birthmark,” “In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one.” That is, he married a beautiful woman.
The scientist—actually more of an alchemist—gazed at his beautiful wife one day after they were married and remarked, “‘Georgiana has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?’”
She was beautiful, but not perfect and her birthmark became his and then her obsession. Surely science and technology could make Georgiana perfect.
Dr. Virginia Arbery spoke to the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought about “The Birthmark” as we considered “The Ancient and Modern Challenges of Technology.” Afterwards we had this conversation.
Tuesday Aug 22, 2023
Tuesday Aug 22, 2023
“A number of people, by now,” wrote Wendell Berry, “have told me that I could greatly improve things by buying a computer. My answer is that I am not going to do it.”
As the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought considered the topic “The Ancient and Modern Challenges of Technology” this past June, we thought we end not only Martin Heidegger, but with agrarian author Wendell Berry, reading two essays: “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” along with letters to the editor and Berry’s responses and “The Use of Energy” where he, like Heidegger, worries that modern technology turns all things including humans and all human things into “standing reserve.”
Dr. Daniel Shields gave the Wyoming School these introductory remarks.