The Sower

Josh Bowman reflects on where the Ciceronian Society has been in 2025 and where we’re going in 2026. He also offers some commentary on where we as Christians find ourselves socially and culturally, and what that means for institutions like ours. 

If you’re grateful for this Podcast and for the work of the Ciceronian Society, please prayerfully consider a year-end gift. There are several ...

Chris Anadale and Bill Batchelder interview Madeleine Austin, winner of the 2025 Batchelder Award for the Study of Place. Her winning paper was titled "An Everyman's Environmentalism: Love of Place as a Virtue."

Madeleine lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina with her husband, Joshua. She is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, wh...

Josh Bowman chats with the Acton Institute’s Dylan Pahman about his new book, The Kingdom of God and the Common Good: Orthodox Christian Social Thought (Ancient Faith Press). We discuss the history of, and possibilities for, Orthodox Christianity in its engagement with questions of social and economic thought.  

Buy the book here: https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-kingdom-of-god-and-the...

This special episode is a recording from our 2025 Conference in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The panel is "Inspirations for Classical Education," and the speakers are:

Stephen McGinley (Mount St. Mary's University & Good Soil Farm) - "Festivity, Education, and Farming"

Gerald Boersma (Ave Maria University) - "A Pagan Paideia and the Contested Ressourcement of the Fathers"

Mary Clare Young...

Josh Bowman chats with Winston Brady of Thales Press and Thales Academy about his evocative and moving novel, The Inferno (Fidelis Press, 2023). We discuss the nature of sin and repentance, as well as themes of vice, evil, greed, American History, suicide, depression, and Hell. Winston’s story, creatively described in his novel, is a testimony of God’s redeeming love and forgiveness. 

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This special episode is a recording from our 2025 Conference in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The panel is "Theological Perspectives on the Market," and the speakers are:

John Robinson (James Madison University) - "Scarcity, Isolation, and Dependence: Economic Insight in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce"

Erik Matson (Mercatus Center) - "Economics and Evil"

Paul Radich (Catholic University of Ameri...

Josh Bowman leads a discussion on the recently republished 1973 book The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought (American Philosophical Society Press, 2025) by the American sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-1996). Joining him are Luke Sheahan of Duquesne University, author of the foreword to this edition, and Paul Mueller of the American Institute for E...

This special episode is a recording of a panel at the June 2025 meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters in College Park, Maryland. We are grateful to the APL for their permission to publish this recording.

The panel is titled "Book Roundtable – Aristocratic Voices: Forgotten Arguments about Virtue, Authority, and Inequality" and the panelists are:

Ethan Alexander-Davey, Campbell...

This special episode is a recording from our 2025 Conference in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The panel is "The Gifts of Christian Humanism," and the speakers are:

Chris Armstrong (Anselm House) - "Twentieth Century Christian Humanism and the Retrieval of the Premodern Real"

Darrell Falconburg (Russell Kirk Center) - "Christian Humanism and the Renewal of Education"

Jason Jewell (State Univers...

Josh Bowman speaks with Joy Moore, a Nebraska native, mother, and writer now living in South Dakota. She is also an adjunct law professor at the Univ. of South Dakota. This episode focuses on her newest project concerning the topic of friendship.

The 2026 Ciceronian Society Conference will be held March 12-14 at Creighton University in Omaha, NE.  We hope you’ll join us! Register here: h...

Josh Bowman interviews Nate Roberts, founder of the Michigan Academy of Folk Music (MAFM). (This 2025 episode combines 2 episodes previously published in 2023.)

In the first half of this episode, we talk through Nate and MAFM’s approach to music education and its overlap with classical education, homeschooling, and more. In the second half, we talk about the role of music in discipleship...