Composed: Timeless Ways of Living

Fighting for the Real: Jeanne Schindler on Presence, Technology, and the Life We Share

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

Show Notes

What does it take to remain fully human in an age of distraction? In this conversation, Christine Perrin speaks with Dr. Jeanne Schindler about attention, technology, homeschooling, civic life, and the quiet disciplines that help us fight for what is real. Together they consider how modern devices flatten experience, weaken our sense of place, and make presence harder to practice, while also pointing toward a better way, one rooted in community life, embodied friendship, serious thought, and shared public spaces. This is a conversation about recovering the habits that make a human life deep, relational, and truly lived.

Drawing from her own intellectual formation, Dr. Schindler reflects on childhood influences, her shift from history to political theory, her decision to leave tenure and devote herself more fully to home and family, and the rewards of lifelong learning through homeschooling. She and Christine also explore AI, the limits of technology, the strain placed on civic discourse, and why restlessness should not always be medicated by screens, but instead received as a summons to seek truth, communion, and a richer form of life.

About the Guest
Dr. Jeanne Schindler is a Fellow of the John Paul II Institute. Until 2013 she was an associate professor at Villanova University. Dr. Schindler’s intellectual interests are interdisciplinary, integrating philosophy, theology, and political science. She has lectured and published in a variety of areas, including Catholic social thought and democratic theory. She edited Christianity and Civil Society: Catholic and Neo-Calvinist Perspectives (2008) and co-edited with her husband, D.C. Schindler, A Robert Spaemann Reader (Oxford University Press, 2015). Dr. Schindler is a homeschooling mother of three children.

Guest Links & Resources
The Postman Pledge
James Howard Kunstler TED Talk
Amusing Ourselves to Death
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan
The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet

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Patterns That Make Us Alive: Timothy Patitsas on Beauty, Learning, and Home

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What makes a place, a school, or a daily life feel truly human? In this conversation, Christine Perrin and Timothy Patitsas explore beauty first living, the “quality without a name” described by Christopher Alexander, and the patterns that help people feel at home, at ease, and fully alive. Together they consider paper routes, classrooms, liturgical seasons, friendship, motherhood, teaching, and the built world, asking how living patterns form the soul and why beauty is not an ornament to life but one of its deepest truths. This episode is an invitation to notice the forms of life that nourish wonder, awaken desire for the good, and help us belong more deeply to the world.

Their conversation moves from childhood memory to architecture, pedagogy, eros, ritual, and community. Along the way, Timothy reflects on the difference between potent information and quality information, the role of stories in shaping desire, and the kinds of educational practices that help students encounter truth not only analytically, but with their whole persons.

About the Guest

Timothy Patitsas is Assistant Professor of Ethics at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary in Boston, Massachusetts. Between 2007 and 2019 he directed the annual seminary pilgrimage to Constantinople, Mount Athos, Greece, and the Holy Land. In 2019 he published The Ethics of Beauty, which has sold more than eight thousand copies. In 2023 he co-directed and co-produced “Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos,” a documentary short which became an official selection at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.

More from our Guest

Hellenic College Holy Cross | Timothy Patitsas, PhD
The Ethics of Beauty
Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos
Hellenic College Holy Cross on Instagram

The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander

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Motherhood and the Dignity of Dependence

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Composed, Leah Libresco reflects on her journey from atheism to Catholicism and the deeper vision of human flourishing that emerged through that conversion. Drawing on stories from her life and work, including the patient rhythms of sourdough baking, Libresco explores how the patterns and habits of ordinary life can form us in attentiveness, responsibility, and care for others. Throughout the conversation, she challenges modern assumptions about autonomy, arguing instead for the dignity of dependence and the goodness of our embodied lives. Touching on questions of community, feminism, and human identity, Libresco invites listeners to consider how embracing our limits and our need for one another may be the very path toward a richer and more humane way of living.

Leah reflects on feminism, motherhood, masculine vocation, risk, and the meaning crisis of our age, making the case that real flourishing grows not from autonomy, but from ties of love, duty, and mutual care. She also offers practical wisdom for building communities where people can give and receive help with honesty and grace.

About the Guest

Leah Libresco is the author of three books, most recently The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. This book argues that women’s equality with men doesn’t depend on their interchangeability with men. Leah has been writing on these themes for some time on her Substack, Other Feminisms.

Leah currently works in family policy in Washington D.C. Previously, she worked as a news writer for FiveThirtyEight and in campus ministry at Princeton. Leah lives in Maryland with her husband and children

Guest Links

Leah Libresco Website
The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto
Other Feminisms
“Needing Help Is Normal” at Christianity Today

Humanitas Institute Links

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Learning to See: Attention as Participation

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Lynette Hull invites us into a conversation about art, faith, and the quiet transformation that can happen when the two meet. With warmth and wisdom, she reflects on creativity as a spiritual practice and on the ways beauty can draw us deeper into meaning and connection. It’s a thoughtful and inspiring exchange that will leave you curious to see the world, and perhaps your own creative life, a little differently.

Lynette’s work with iconography opens a rich window onto questions of sacred art, spiritual formation, and the role of beauty in everyday life. This episode offers an inviting starting point for listeners interested in faith, imagination, and the practices that shape how we see.

About the Guest

Lynette Hull holds a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College and was raised in an active Bible Presbyterian family as the granddaughter of an internationally known radio preacher. Married and the mother of three, she homeschooled her children through eighth grade before beginning her formal study of iconography in 2004 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey, and converting to Holy Orthodoxy in 2009. From 2009 to 2017, she studied weekly with master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev. In 2015, she commissioned a collection of 45 icons from teachers and advanced students of the Prosopon School, later exhibited at the Icon Museum & Study Center in Clinton, Massachusetts. During the COVID years, she created a mobile icon museum to bring sacred art into churches and public spaces, and she currently serves on the board of the Icon Museum & Study Center while teaching catechism at her church in Virginia Beach.

Guest Links

Lynette Hull Website
Wrestling with Angels softcover
Wrestling with Angels: Icons from the Prosopon School of Iconology and Iconography at The Icon Museum and Study Center
Video Gallery
Video Tour of Icon Museum
Re-creation of the Icon: Lynette Hull at TEDxCapeMay 2012 - Recreation and Re-creation

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Bearing Life, Bearing one Another

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0800

In this thoughtful episode, Christine sits down with writer and educator Agnes Howard for a rich conversation about motherhood, community, and what it means to share in the human experience. Together, they reflect on the deeper significance of pregnancy, the cultural pressures surrounding work and family life, and the beauty of living in meaningful connection with others. With warmth and insight, Howard invites listeners to reconsider familiar assumptions and to see everyday life as something both communal and deeply significant.

This conversation will resonate with listeners interested in family life, cultural criticism, embodied experience, and the ways ordinary responsibilities can reveal deeper truths about what it means to be human.

About the Guest

Agnes Howard is an American Historian, mother, teacher, and writer. She is author of Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human (Eerdmans, 2020) and the forthcoming, Disoriented: Embodied Life in Strange Times (Cascade, 2026). Here and on a Substack called Momcare she discusses the culture of maternity and family life.

Guest Links

Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human
Creativity Calls for More than a Room of One's Own
Is Potty Training What You Will Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life
Opting Out of Mother's Day
Not Going Back: Motherhood in the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Mothering in the Midst of Others Who Enlarge Us

Humanitas Institute — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:38:42 -0800

What does it mean to build a school and a life shaped by community, conviction, and daily rhythms of grace? In this episode, Madeleine Hewitt, Assistant Head of School at Claritas Classical Christian Academy, shares her journey through education, motherhood, and mentorship, and how each has shaped the other. She reflects on the challenges of idealism, the power of guiding principles, and the formative role of liturgy in everyday life. Madeleine closes by reading Gerard Manley Hopkins beautifully, capturing the wonder and weight of it all.

This conversation will resonate with listeners who care about classical education, family life, spiritual formation, and the steady practices that give shape to a meaningful life. Madeleine offers a thoughtful picture of how conviction and community can sustain both a household and a school.

About the Guest

Madeleine Hewitt is a wife, mother, teacher, administrator, and home educator. She is a graduate of The Templeton Honors College and has earned her Masters Degree in Classical Teaching through the same college. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband and four young children. They are members of St. Philips Orthodox Church and are a part of a newly-founded mission parish along with a number of other young Orthodox families. She homeschools her children as well as teaches and administrates at a local university-model classical academy.

Guest Links

As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Mother and Child Looking at the Virgin and Child by Reginald Bottomley

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Living Patterns and How We Learn Them

Humanitas Institute — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:17:22 -0800

Emily Maeda, mother of seven, grandmother of two, describes the living patterns in her life, passed down from her own mother, that have helped her in raising her children, starting a school, and designing gardens for now and for posterity.

The Opening Question

Humanitas Institute — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:08:18 -0800

In the inaugural episode of the Forged and Composed podcasts, our hosts come together for a conversation about what it means to “forge” and “compose” a life marked by beauty, order, and purpose. Their dialogue explores human flourishing, focal practices, and the formative power of beauty, art, and community. Drawing on personal experience, they reflect on hospitality, generosity, nature, and the role of exemplars in shaping lives marked by meaning and fulfillment. Join us at the beginning.