No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

Wouldn't you rather not know how the world ends?

Nine nations hold nuclear weapons, and every one of them is watched, counted, and deterred. A biological weapon needs no nation, no missile, and no submarine. The delivery system is a pair of lungs, and the barrier to entry is a working knowledge of biology and a computer. That asymmetry is why the journalist who wrote the definitive account of how the world ends in seventy-two minutes has spent the last two years on something that frightens her more.

Annie Jacobsen is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author who has spent more than fifteen years reporting on classified military and intelligence programs, reconstructing worst-case scenarios from the testimony of the people who built them. Her new book, Biological War: A Scenario, follows Nuclear War: A Scenario. She calls us to courage by reminding us that you cannot fix what you cannot face.

Key Ideas

Six Minutes to Decide What the nuclear chain of command actually looks like once a missile is airborne, and why the clock is the least of the problems.

The Delivery System Is a Pair of Lungs Why a biological weapon needs no missile, no submarine, and almost no barrier to entry, and why that changes everything about who has to worry.

What the Pandemic Actually Cost Us Jacobsen's argument that the most lasting damage of COVID was never counted in cases, and that we are still paying it.

The Pope's Quiet Backchannel A story she learned at the Vatican about how the world once stepped back from the brink, and why almost no one was allowed to know.

Old Men in Their Nineties What decades of interviewing soldiers near the end of their lives taught her about how a human being changes.

Solution, Solution, Solution Her answer to the reader who finishes the book, decides the worst case is inevitable, and gives up.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Annie Jacobsen

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No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠
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This is our unabridged interview with Malcolm Guite.

A frightened knight, cornered in a castle he doesn't understand, grabs a spear he was warned not to touch and drives it into the king. And because the king and the land are one, the whole country goes barren. The rivers empty, the crops fail, nothing can be born. It's called the Dolorous Stroke, and poet Malcolm Guite first heard it at eight years old from his mother. When he protested that the knight didn't know what he was doing, that no world could work this way, his mother answered him: “I'm telling you this story because you need to know that you live in just such a world.”

But there's a second half. The same spear that wounded the king is the only thing that can heal him.

Guite is a poet, Anglican priest, life fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and the frontman of a rhythm-and-blues band. His latest work is Merlin's Isle: An Arthuriad, a four-volume epic retelling of the Arthurian legends in ballad form, beginning with Galahad and the Grail. He's convinced these old stories are older and wiser than we are, that they know something we've spent a few centuries forgetting.

Key Ideas

The Dolorous Stroke One rash act, one seized spear, and a whole land laid waste. The medieval image Guite thinks describes exactly where we are now.

The Spear That Wounds Also Heals The strange logic at the heart of the Grail story, and why the cure has to come through the very thing that caused the wound.

You Live in Just Such a World What Guite's mother told an eight-year-old about a world that can be undone by one frightened person, in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Boy Who Read the Poem At sixteen, homesick and depressed, Guite reads Keats and walks out certain something had happened that brain chemistry could never fully explain.

The Immense Relief of Being a Creature What happens when you stop having to be the be-all and end-all of everything, and why that turns out to be freedom rather than loss.

Vulnerable Means Woundable The Latin root that reframes depression, love, and the whole shape of a good life. Love doesn't tower over. It comes down on the level with you.

The Wasteland We're In Now How a barren medieval kingdom became, for Guite, a picture of disenchantment, ecological ruin, and a culture that's lost the thread of its own story.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Malcolm Guite

Thank you to our sponsors:

The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IGottaAsk.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join NSE+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.

No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠
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What happens when a retired theology professor walks into a party full of deconstructing twenty-somethings? It sounds like the start of a joke. But really. How do we show up for ourselves and the people we love when doubt and deconstruction enter the chat?

This week on The Subtext, Lee and Savannah discuss one of the more defining conversations of modern faith: deconstruction. Whether you're asking big questions yourself or walking alongside someone who is, this episode is an invitation to keep showing up with curiosity, compassion, and hope.

Things we mentioned in this episode:

Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta

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A frightened knight, cornered in a castle he doesn't understand, grabs a spear he was warned not to touch and drives it into the king. And because the king and the land are one, the whole country goes barren. The rivers empty, the crops fail, nothing can be born. It's called the Dolorous Stroke, and poet Malcolm Guite first heard it at eight years old from his mother. When he protested that the knight didn't know what he was doing, that no world could work this way, his mother answered him: “I'm telling you this story because you need to know that you live in just such a world.”

But there's a second half. The same spear that wounded the king is the only thing that can heal him.

Guite is a poet, Anglican priest, life fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and the frontman of a rhythm-and-blues band. His latest work is Merlin's Isle: An Arthuriad, a four-volume epic retelling of the Arthurian legends in ballad form, beginning with Galahad and the Grail. He's convinced these old stories are older and wiser than we are, that they know something we've spent a few centuries forgetting.

Key Ideas

The Dolorous Stroke One rash act, one seized spear, and a whole land laid waste. The medieval image Guite thinks describes exactly where we are now.

The Spear That Wounds Also Heals The strange logic at the heart of the Grail story, and why the cure has to come through the very thing that caused the wound.

You Live in Just Such a World What Guite's mother told an eight-year-old about a world that can be undone by one frightened person, in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Boy Who Read the Poem At sixteen, homesick and depressed, Guite reads Keats and walks out certain something had happened that brain chemistry could never fully explain.

The Immense Relief of Being a Creature What happens when you stop having to be the be-all and end-all of everything, and why that turns out to be freedom rather than loss.

Vulnerable Means Woundable The Latin root that reframes depression, love, and the whole shape of a good life. Love doesn't tower over. It comes down on the level with you.

The Wasteland We're In Now How a barren medieval kingdom became, for Guite, a picture of disenchantment, ecological ruin, and a culture that's lost the thread of its own story.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Malcolm Guite⁠

Thank you to our sponsors:

The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IGottaAsk.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join NSE+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.

No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠⁠
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is our unabridged interview with W. Lee Warren.

Can you change your brain? The anxious tendencies, the recurring grief, the patterns of rumination? Our guest today says you can.

Dr. W. Lee Warren is a neurosurgeon and Iraq War veteran who performed 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital during the war, came home carrying PTSD he wouldn't name for years, and later lost his 19-year-old son to murder. His book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, argues that the mind can reshape the very brain it thinks through, and that no grief, trauma, or lifelong pattern gets the final word on who you become.

KEY IDEAS

Feelings as barometer, not navigation: Why an alarming share of what you feel isn't tracking anything that's actually happening, and the small practice that changes how you respond to it.

The 90% problem: Most of what you thought about today, you also thought yesterday, and that quiet repetition is busy building the exact brain you're convinced you're stuck with.

Grief that refines instead of defines: What a father learns about resilience when the worst thing that ever happened to him threatens to become his whole identity.

The fear you inherited but never earned: How trauma can travel three generations down a family line, and the study suggesting it can also be undone in one.

Doing the hard thing on purpose: The small, unglamorous brain circuit that willpower actually runs on, and why making the bed can matter more than it sounds.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with W. Lee Warren

Thank you to our sponsors:

The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IGottaAsk.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join NSE+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.

No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices