In this episode, we discuss the countercultural habits you should adopt to live a rich and meaningful life. Popular culture is, by its very nature, fleeting and temporary. As a result, it often promotes habits that have no enduring value and add little meaning to our lives. Fads and fashions are incapable of fostering the elevated modes of living we truly desire. Instead, we need to thoughtfully analyze the cultural habits we have—intentionally or unintentionally—adopted and practice on a dai...
Jul 20, 2023
22 min
In this episode, we consider the cost of busyness and the importance of slowing down. Your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, talks about the tendency of perfectionists, high achievers, entrepreneurs, students, and mothers, to constantly add more to their lives, all why trying to optimize every second to compensate for wildly busy schedules. The reason we do this is because we live in a society that glorifies busyness and views worth as contingent upon work. But this constant busyness isn't doing us ...
Jun 28, 2023
23 min
In this episode, we explore five simple, but powerful, ways that you can begin to enjoy the "finer things" in life today—and they won't cost you anything. Join your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, as she discusses how the finest things in life are free and available to everyone. Too often, we approach our lives with the idea that we can enjoy things someday when ______. However, life is fleet-footed, as Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius suggests, and putting our enjoyment of life off for some future t...
Jun 21, 2023
29 min
In this podcast we consider the question: Why should we read the classics? Using Homer's Iliad as our compass, we explore how classic literature can help us transcend our own lives to engage in the grand meta narrative of history. Chelsia discusses that what makes a classic a classic isn't necessarily the poetic or literary brilliance of a work, but its ability to timelessly strike at the very marrow of what it means to be human. She then goes on to consider how literature is soul-forming, wh...
Jun 10, 2023
17 min
In this podcast we consider the question: What does it mean to be cultured? Chelsia explains that although we are all cultured by the people, places, things, and experiences we encounter, to be cultured in the classic sense means something more—that is, to possess elevated manners, refined tastes, well-rounded knowledge, and a strong sense of historical centredness. She emphasizes that each of these characteristics must be tied to strong character, explains why curiosity is one of the m...
May 31, 2023
32 min