Episode #2: From the "Upper Station of Low Life" to the Academy, with Jeff Zalar

Dear Readers,

Podcast #2 is ready to go, and it’s another great one. My colleague Jeff Zalar joins me. This is a wide-ranging conversation that takes us from the post-industrial, working-class Rust Belt, to Panama and the first Gulf War (via the Marines), through graduate school at Georgetown, and finally to the University of Cincinnati. It’s a story of grit and determination with a heavy Midwestern accent. It also includes about the finest explanation of the value of a humanities education that you will ever hear. Plus thoughts on the culture of drinking in the military. You may not have heard of Jeff, but this conversation is definitely worth your time.

As always, the episode is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts, and the Substack app.

Episode outline:

0:00-4:00—Episode introduction.

4:00-18:15—Growing up in working-class, greater Milwaukee; Slavic immigrant roots; schoolboy days and learning to love learning.

18:15-27:00—Deciding to join the Marines; military intelligence; Panama; the Gulf War, and developing a deep thirst for education.

27:00-33:30—The culture of drinking in the Marines.

33:30-47:00—Off to college; from struggles to excellence; the huge difference a professor can make; deciding to pursue a career in academia.

47:00-56:30—Off to graduate school; Washington, D.C. and Georgetown.

56:30-1:04:00—Finishing graduate school; humility and learning the value of teaching.

1:04:00-1:12:00—First academic job in California; life struggles; early teaching struggles; the critical role of grit.

1:12:00-1:23:00—Dumb luck and finding the right job posting; coming to Cincinnati and the challenges of pulling up stakes with a family.

1:23:00-1:28:30—Current project on Catholics and natural science in the nineteenth century; I interject a story about the discovery of intoxicant cannabis in Mexico by an eighteenth-century Catholic man of science.

1:28:30-1:41:00—The value of history and the humanities; cultivating excellence, virtue, integrity, humility, and charity.

1:41:00-end—The story of Saint Boniface, which is the name of the church near my house. You can hear the church bells at the start of the podcast, though that was totally unintentional.