Next spring I’ll be teaching History and Politics of Sports for the second time. It’s hard to know how much change to make, given that the inaugural class was forced online halfway through semester by a global pandemic. But one difference is already evident: I’ll be leading the course by myself, since my friend and … More Thursday’s Podcast: The Politics of the Olympics
I don’t much like that I’m old enough that I can discern decade-long segments in my career… but it is worth noting that it was ten years ago yesterday that I published my first post at The Pietist Schoolman! Since then, I’ve written another 2,200 posts here — plus 250-some at The Anxious Bench, where I … More Ten (and Five) Years of Blogging
This June will mark the tenth anniversary of The Pietist Schoolman, a blog that was inspired and influenced by John Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home. (John also helped found The Anxious Bench, which I joined five years ago this June.) Though we blog very differently, our interests continue to overlap in many areas. … More New from John Fea & Co. – Current
It’s been a few months since the last time we shared an episode of our sports podcast, The 252. So I was glad when Chris Moore stuck his head in my office earlier this week and asked if we could record a “micropod” about the latest iterations in the debate over sports, protest, and the … More Wednesday’s Podcast: The National Anthem
Yesterday I mentioned that I’ve recorded 21 podcasts this year, including a limited-run series with Amy Poppinga called Pandemics and the Liberal Arts and new episodes of my sports podcast with Chris Moore and Sam Mulberry, The 252, and Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz, the odd little show in which Sam and I simply talk about … More Thursday’s Podcast: A 2020 Time Capsule
Even as he grieves over the loss of Ohio State football for the fall, Chris Moore joined Sam Mulberry and me for a new episode of The 252, “sports talk radio as done by academics.” While Chris and I won’t be teaching our History and Politics of Sports class again until 2022, we mean to continue producing occasional … More Saturday’s Podcast: Checking In on Sports under COVID
My favorite, strangest, most intermittent podcast dropped an episode today. That’s right, for the first time since January, there’s new Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz to enjoy! As Sam Mulberry and I continued my quixotic quest to find a rhyme (in English) for my odd last name, we riffed on six words, most having some kind of COVID … More Nothing Rhymes with Gehrz (COVID Edition)
On the 2019-20 season finale of The 252, Chris Moore and I reflected on what we learned from our first time teaching History and Politics of Sports at Bethel. Then Sam Mulberry joined us to talk about how different professional and college sports are planning to resume play — or already have done so. We talked about everything … More Thursday’s Podcast: The Return of Sports (?)
Today Amy Poppinga and I wrapped up our podcast series on Pandemics and the Liberal Arts with an episode on art. Thanks to our Bethel colleagues Amanda Hamilton and Wayne Roosa for a really rich conversation about the importance of art within the larger curriculum of the liberal arts, how art has provided catharsis and … More Wednesday’s Podcast: Art and Pandemics
As we reach the last week of spring classes at Bethel, Chris and I devoted part of this week’s episode of The 252 to talking our students through their final exam. But the rest of you will want to listen in for what follows: a conversation about e-sports with our Bethel colleague Adrian Smithee, who has … More Thursday’s Podcast: E-Sports
