In collaboration with several talented colleagues at Bethel University, I’ve produced several podcast (and one webisode) series over the years:
The podcast that grew out of this blog has been around since 2015. That first, twelve-episode season extended and expanded the conversation that began with my book, The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education.
In early 2016 a second season featured Mark Pattie and I thinking aloud through the writing of our new book, now available as The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity.
In fall 2017 a third season explored the history and memory of the Protestant Reformation as it turns five hundred years old. Then a brief fourth season in fall 2018 previewed sites that our first Pietist Schoolman Travel tour visited in June 2019.
My current podcast project is another collaboration with Sam. College for Christians served as a kind of aural rough draft of a book we want to write: a guide to higher education for Christian families. Season 1 was recorded throughout the spring of 2022, as we tried to walk listeners through the weeds of college admissions and financial aid. This fall our second season will turn to helping students transition into college and thrive during that experience.
A preview of a new course on sports history (HIS252L) at Bethel, The 252 finds Sam and me talking with Chris Moore about baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and more… as a way to talk about larger themes like race, gender, faith, ethics, justice, etc. Episodes recorded occasionally on the Live from AC2nd network.
Another collaboration with Sam, this occasional Live from AC2nd podcast features the two of us riffing on six words (none of which ever rhyme with my last name) that have come up in current events, popular culture, teaching, or elsewhere in our lives.
Produced with Sam in spring 2015 as a weekly series of webisodes for the Bethel University Department of History, Past & Presence is incorporated into our hybrid Intro to History course. Each episode featured a faculty conversation about a topic in the course, an interview with a professor or alum, and ads for courses and programs. I “hosted” each episode from a historic location in and around the Twin Cities. Learn more and find episode summaries here.
A series of eleven hour-long podcasts that I produced in Fall 2008 for my upper-level Modern Europe survey. Each replaced a Monday or Friday lecture, effectively giving my students long weekends almost the entire semester. Not surprisingly, students loved this.
Much more surprisingly, the series found an international audience of people under no obligation to listen and even appeared regularly on the Top Downloads and Featured Podcasts sections for its category in iTunes U. One listener taught AP European History at a school in Texas and interviewed me about the origins and purpose of Radio Modern Europe for his course blog.
A purely optional supplement to Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture course (hence “CWC”) that I co-hosted with Sam and other colleagues (Stacey Hunter Hecht, Sara Shady, and Amy Poppinga) from 2006 to 2011. (Read this post for more on its origins.) If you want to hear evangelical scholars from different disciplines talk about church history, philosophy, theology, and other weighty things, skip ahead to the second segment in each episode. If you want to hear the same people riff on television, shopping, sports, pop music, and other essential elements of Western culture in the 21st century, start from the beginning.
Another collaboration with Sam, The Policast was basically an excuse to capitalize on our friend Stacey’s (a) expertise as a political scientist and (b) mini-celebrity ’round town as a regular contributor to our local public television station’s public affairs program. This was a series of podcasts concerning various aspects of the 2008 election campaign (national, state, local) and, more generally, politics in the United States.
Its second season began late February 2012, with Bethel international relations professor Chris Moore filling in for Stacey during her sabbatical.
Guest Appearances
I’ve also been a guest on several other podcast series:
- “Excitement, Vulnerability, and a Willingness to Keep Learning,” Eyes Up Mindset (Aug. 29, 2022)
- “The Gospel According to Charles Lindbergh,” The Way of Improvement Leads Home (Sept. 5, 2021)
- “Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Pilot,” New Books Network (Aug. 25, 2021)
- “Hope vs. Optimism,” O Ye of Middle Faith (July 13, 2020)
- “Impeachment,” Election Shock Therapy (Sept. 20, 2018)
- “Chris Gehrz on the Pietist Option,” The 5101 Podcast (Aug. 16, 2018)
- “The Pietist Vision of Higher Education,” Christian Humanist Profiles (Feb. 25, 2015)
- “Chris Gehrz,” Autobiography (Feb. 12, 2014)
- “The Crisis of Christian Colleges,” Research on Religion (Nov. 3, 2013)
- “Christian Colleges,” The Christian Humanist Podcast (Mar. 17, 2010)
The Pietist Schoolman 
4 thoughts on “Podcasts”