This'll Take A While

As he approaches the end of a happy and productive career teaching biology at BYU, Professor Jack Sites reflects on the unknowable expanse and inexhaustible delights of Nature, and its study. Here, truly, is the greatest of historical disciplines, a vast network of lineages that involves and embraces us all.

Dawn Teuscher makes her way over to the program by way of BYU's Department of Math Education. You're not all tuning out now, are you? Come back here! Listen as Dawn calmly, caringly illustrates some of the many applications, pleasures and, yes, beauties of this misunderstood not-so-monster.

Seth Bybee continues our series of biological discussions by explaining the particularities of scientific theory, and the semi-certainties that that concept suggests. After that he and Dean move onto something that might have frightened some of you, and maybe without reason. It's okay. We all evolve! 

BYU Scandinavianist Chip Oscarson rejoins Dean to celebrate the matchless, magisterial cinema of this great Danish film director.

BYU biologist Roger Koide discusses the fundamental interdependency of all species, great and small. He shows how an understanding of this quite wonderful reality can move us past the antagonism we sometimes feel toward other organisms, or to the positive voices that properly advocate for them.

Andy Reed, from BYU's Department of Church History, joins the program to talk about the vast length, breadth, depth and antiquity of world religion, as well as the urgent need of pretty well everybody bearing down to learn way more about it. Andy's own scholarly focus is on Judaism, and as this recording winds down he gives us a tantalizing glimpse of his own important and expanding Jewish scholarship.

Stan Benfell, a professor in BYU's department of comparative arts and letters, visits Dean to educate him about some very big words that we've all heard of, and might not know enough about. Classical? Medievalism? Romance? Renaissance? These sagas all unfold here.  

College of Humanities professors Daryl Lee and Chip Oscarson visit the show on the 50th anniversary of BYU's celebrated International Cinema program. They affirm that though subtitles may seem hard at first, being open to the world's films may just help us to solve some of the world's problems.

Acclaimed essayist Patrick Madden rejoins the program to talk Dean through some of the rudiments, challenges and satisfactions of simultaneously living and writing your life.

The BYU English department's Dennis Cutchins joins Dean to discuss the benefits of reading challenging, difficult material. They also consider those occasions when a reader might just decide to get himself out of there!

Between the two of them, Gordon and Rella Christensen have more dentistry-related university degrees than you can even brandish a drill at. They bring all of that knowledge and experience, together with inspiring amounts of conviction and devotion, to show how if you take care of your teeth, your teeth will take care of you.

BYU English professor Stephen Tuttle joins Dean to enthuse at considerable and joyful length about Herman Melville's inexhaustibly great 1851 novel.

Dean warily welcomes three actual and authentic Millennials to the program. They tactfully try to tell him about how obsolescent he obviously is. He counters with unrelated and unconvincing tales about his cool youth. Altogether, a pretty depressing prospect!

Carl Sederholm is a professor and administrator at BYU's department of comparative literature. He is also a connoisseur of the weird, which is why we have invited him to illuminate the wild and continuingly resonant work of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.

Ben Unguren, a local LDS clergyman, brings a report from the front lines of a very dire and long lasting war. He and Dean discuss some of the causes, some of the almost innumerable complications, and a few of the bright blessings that come from trying to attend to this basic Christian duty.

Looks like Dean wanted Naomi Watkins, co-founder of Aspiring Mormon Women, to come on the show in order to personify the convergence of technology and feminism. Watch him scramble as Naomi quickly outflanks him, demonstrating again how much more people are than any mere preconception or pigeonhole.

BYU Communications scholar and professor Scott Church visits the program to talk about what's really important to him, which is the somewhat challenge and unspeakable privilege of being a (co) parent of all and only girls.

Brad Kramer, an instructor of anthropology at Utah Valley University, joins Dean to talk about his Writ and Vision gallery and bookstore, a general meeting place for smart and aspiring and restless people.

The University of Vermont's Tony Magistrale and BYU's own Carl Sederholm visit the show to assess, analyze and celebrate this undeniable American literary and cultural phenomenon. Have you ever wondered where to start reading this guy, or if you want to start at all? We've got you covered!

Dean welcomes Rachel Quarnberg, the busy proprietor of what has become a booming to bursting mid-sized commercial concern around here. Rachel lays out some of the wherefores of starting and cultivating a business, as well as some of the personal strains and satisfactions that come from trying to do and have it all. And more or less succeeding!