On Guest Hosting Podcasts and Self-Realization

Today I guest hosted the Acton Unwind podcast!

This week’s episode, ‘Lent So Hot Right Now’, features Dan Churchwell, Emily Zanotti, and I discussing the death of Russian opposition activist and political prisoner Alexei Navalny, rare-earth mineral discoveries, the rise of the computer chip, and Lent.

Hosting a podcast like Acton Unwind takes me roughly double the time of simply being a panelist. The preparatory reading is the same as is the actual recording time. The difference lies in generating topics and scripting.

Generating topics involves a bit of exploratory reading as well as the cultivation of a general awareness of the week’s “news cycle”. Scripting is fairly straightforward. It’s necessary preparation but all the best bits of any podcast are unscripted. Better scripting gives more confidence. The more confident you are, the more likely you are to have those unscripted gems.

My three favorite unscripted moments in this episode were Dan Churchwell sharing his memories of Wheatland, Emily Zanotti talking about her army of computer chip powered appliances, and both of them sharing their family’s Lenten spiritual practices.

Our discussion of the technological transformation of homemaking reminded me of what Alex Tabarrok wrote last year in his brief essay ‘The Harried Leasure Class’:

Time management is a cognitively strenuous task, leaving us feeling harried. As the opportunity cost of time increases, our concern about “wasting” our precious hours grows more acute. On balance, we are better off, but the blessing of high-value time can overwhelm some individuals, just as can the ready availability of high-calorie food.

So, whose time has seen an especially remarkable appreciation in the past few decades? Women’s time has experienced a surge in value. As more women have pursued higher education and stepped into professional roles, their time’s value has more than doubled, incentivizing a substantial reorganization of daily life with consequent transaction costs.

The essay is a brilliant theory of why everything is amazing and yet so many people appear to be miserable.

The solution? The realization of the self, along the lines the Heidelberg Catechism suggests:

That I am not my own,
but belong—

body and soul,
in life and in death—

to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.