Pair Of Fools Podcast

Doug and Caren have a wide-ranging discussion on the place of food in family and community life. This episode sets the stage for more focused food and cooking episodes to come. Does our (often necessary) focus on efficiency in the kitchen steal the joys of shared meals? What is the theological significance of a common table? How can cooking and eating together strengthen the shared rituals that bind our families and communities together? A passage from Tolkien's The Hobbit provides our starting point.

Doug and Caren talk through some of the ways a utilitarian outlook has affected our public policy, churches, educational institutions, our work, and even family lives. Dostoevsky provides the epigraph and starting point for a discussion ranging over Princeton philosopher Peter Singer's problematic bioethics and ways to recover our sense of intrinsic value from a Catholic perspective.

Doug and Caren talk about stuff and clutter, how it hinders our daily life and work, and how to reorder our relationship to things. Our starting point is Thoreau's Walden, the great experiment in testing the essentials. We touch on some popular methods of decluttering, but go a bit deeper into recovering the presence of things, following Walker Percy, and the sacramental significance of order in our lives.

Doug and Caren talk about the wonderful, albeit terrifying, position of mid-life (49 and holding). We examine what creates the illusion of exhausted possibilities and how one can get going again, recover from atrophy, and live more deeply. Emily Dickinson's "I Dwell in Possibility" provides our starting point for looking to live poetry rather than prose, and we touch on other writers and saints along the way.

Welcome to the Rodeo! Doug and Caren introduce themselves and the podcast, its format, and the range of subjects to come.