This episode was recorded live at the 2025 Education for Human Flourishing Conference. James was joined by Dr Brian Williams (Templeton Honors College) and Peter Crawford (Institute for Catholic Liberal Education) to discuss poetry and the poet...

In this talk from the Education for Human Flourishing Conference in 2025, Difff discusses the ways that artificial intelligence offers a false promise of restoring the logos, which has been systematically eroded and dismissed over the past mill...

Difff interviews Sarah Flynn, founder of Logos Australis and The Liberal Arts Project in anticipation of the upcoming National Classical Education Conference: Educating for Human Flourishing.

Joseph Pearce, the critically acclaimed Catholic author and biographer, addressed the community of St John Henry Newman College and the Brisbane Oratory in Formation in May 2025. His topic of 'Shakespeare and Tolkien: Literary Giants and Why th...

Dr Simon Kennedy joins the podcast to discuss his book Against Worldview. Critiquing the 'worldview project' as a governing intention of Christian education, Simon proposes an active growth in wisdom as an alternative to an intell...

In the final episode about Josef Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture, we discuss the connection between leisure and worship and why secular holidays don't cut it. We also compare the totally consuming world of work to the one ring to...

Josef Pieper connects our ability for festival and celebration with schole and leisure. If in our schools we manage our celebrations and justify them with key learnings and outcomes, and asses their relative success or failure against a checkli...

In Part 3 of the series on Leisure the Basis of Culture, the discussion is all about acedia and restlessness as the opposite to leisure.

Our series explaining schole continues with part two on Leisure: The Basis of Culture. In this episode focusing on Chapter Two, we question how hard work and effort have come to be seen as the litmus test of successful educati...

Schole is an alien concept for those new to classical education. In the first episode in our mini-series on the book Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper we discuss what it means to contemplate, and the difference bet...

In this episode James reads a paper that he prepared recently for a classical education symposium. The paper focuses on the role of beauty in education.

James interviews Dr Scott Crider, Professor of English at the University of Dallas where he has taught for thirty years. His book, The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for Academic Essay, is one of James' favourite...

In another short FAQ episode, Difff and James discuss why history is such an important and central focus of Classical Education.

In this interview, Difff speaks to Dr Hugh Chilton from The Scots College, Sydney. They discuss ways that Scots is rediscovering elements of classical and liberal arts education through reclaiming the reality of teachers as scholars and academi...

For the first episode of 2025, Difff and James ask why schools should read the 'Great Books'. What even are the great books, and what makes them so great? Schools have to read something (though that's perhaps not universally ...

For our fiftieth episode, and the last for 2024, we interview Andrew Kern, president of the CIRCE Institute. Answering the question of what are the essential components for a classical education, Andrew discusses the four pillars of coherence, ...

Attempting the impossible, Difff answers the question 'What is classical education?' in less than fifteen minutes. This episode aims to be a brief, succinct snapshot, so if you're worried there is a lack of nuance and depth, may I recommend to ...

What is it like to teach in a classical school? As teachers, we are by default telling our students that what we're teaching is worth loving. We're also telling them that learning itself is worth doing. Teachers, therefore, should love learning...

In the final of the four part series about what is wrong with modern or progressive education, Difff and James discuss anthropology. As James KA Smith says, every pedagogy assumes an anthropology.  Without realising it, anthropology - what...

Having discussed the metaphysical and epistemological ruptures that have impacted education, Difff & James move to ethics. If all education points students towards some conception of good, what is good? How can we come to understand good, e...

In the second episode asking the question of what is wrong with modern progressive education, Difff & James discuss epistemology - the branch of philosophy that deals with questions of what is knowledge, what is knowable, and how we come to...

In the first of four episodes attempting to detail some of the major differences between classical and modern or progressive education, Difff and James discuss metaphysics. Rather than going after specific particular elements of modern educatio...

Difff and James have another amiable argument about a contentious issue in education. This time, we're asking how much say teachers should have over what and how they teach in the classroom?  Does a top-down approach stifle teacher autonom...

What role does the concept of harmony play in education? This episode is a talk that was presented by Difff at the Brisbane Classical Education Conference in June 2024. Focusing on the work of St John Henry Newman, Difff discusses how true educ...

Difff adopts his real name - Kenneth Crowther - and discusses St John Henry Newman College with James. Newman College is a new classical school starting in 2026 in Brisbane, and Kenneth is the school's first principal. In this episode, he expla...