Reflecting on Third Things First Season One!
This week on Third Things First, we’re doing something a little different!
After 8 interviews, a book launch, and this year’s COV&R conference, we decided now would be a good time to reflect on what we’ve learned and look ahead to the future!
This post will conclude “Season One” of Third Things First, a journey about seeking hope and joy amidst growing conflict and uncertainty. These conversations showed us that certainty isn’t returning to our world any time soon (if it ever existed as more than an illusion!) And yet, when we let go of certainty, a new kind of hope springs forth…
Naturally, this provokes a whole new set of questions and interviews we want to have! To give us time to have those conversations and prepare them for all of you, Third Things First will be taking a few months off. We’ll still be posting on Substack and hosting events, but new episodes of Third Things First will resume in mid-November.
In the meantime, I wanted to look back at Season One, and reflect on what we heard. My guest for this episode is Lyle Enright — writer, editor, and producer of this very podcast! He’s been with me every step of the way, helping me choose interviewees and putting the episodes together. As someone who’s been here the whole time, I wanted his perspective on the conversations and where things are headed.
I hope you enjoy this conversation; you’ll be seeing a lot more of Lyle in Season Two!
In the meantime, if you’ve missed any of our previous episodes, you can find them all at the links below! Please share this post with your friends, as this would be a great way to get them into the podcast and what we’re doing here at the Wicked Truth!
David Anderson Hooker joined us as our honored first interview guest, and as VIP at the book launch for The Wicked Truth 2e! He introduced us to the distinction between narrative and story, and this podcast’s namesake concept: the Third Thing!
Brian Ammons (Part 1 and Part 2) spoke with us about his reading of Wicked from the perspective of queer theology and vocational studies, and how Elphaba’s “rebellious” arc is far more complicated than it first appears.
Julia Robinson Moore described her work healing racial divides in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the abandoned graves of enslaved people are transforming from sites of shame into the means of a community’s reconciliation.
Andrew DeCort (Part 1 and Part 2) gave his perspective from the front lines protesting ICE, standing up for the vulnerable, and acting as a “dissident theologian” in the spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We discussed how such activism, if we’re really allowing it to change us, has much more in common with grief than with pure anger.
Jim Warren and Sally Gracialla Ramirez (Part 1 and Part 2) surprised us with their insights into the magic and mystery of peacebuilding, and how wonder and ritual can disrupt our conflictual thinking and ready us for new perspectives.
Gena St. David (Part 1 and Part 2) spoke with us about the neurobiology of peace and conflict, and how, though the human mind sometimes seems wired for conflict, our deeper physical processes suggest that we are built for a nonviolent life.
Pablo Bandera delightfully disrupted our arc by introducing quantum physics as a “third thing”. Beginning with the inherent indeterminacy of the physical world, Pablo explained that we are only truly free when we are aware of who is influencing us. The more we accept that we are a collective, literal co-creators of ourselvse, the more free we become.