Acton Line

In this episode, Acton director of programs and education Dan Churchwell speaks with Leah Kral, an expert facilitator and author who helps nonprofits doing the hard work of building civil society to innovate and be more effective. Good intentions alone don’t translate to impact, so why are nonprofits like the Mayo Clinic so successful when others fail? How can innovation, creativity, originality, and risk-taking be wedded to those good intentions? Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results | Wiley, 2022 To learn more, visitLeahKral.com.

Learn more about Acton UniversityOn today’s episode, we present a discussion from Acton University 2023 between director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn and North Korean defector and human rights activist Yeonmi Park. At age 13, Park and her family made a daring escape from North Korea in search of a life free of tyranny. In her viral talks, viewed online nearly 250 million times, Park urges audiences to recognize—and resist—the oppression that exists in North Korea and around the world.

In this episode, Acton’s director of marketing and communications, Eric Kohn, talks with Jonathan Greenberg, the Jack Miller Family Foundation’s director of freedom initiatives and the former Midwest director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee about the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the significance of the October 7 massacre, especially what it will mean for Israel and the region going forward. While the Gaza-Israeli dispute has been going on since at least 2006, the broader Israeli-Palestinian battle dates back decades, the contours of which are often poorly misunderstood as some subset of geopolitics or primarily about human rights or the specifics of a two-state solution. To fully grasp what’s going on, you have to understand that the conflict didn’t start in 1973 or even 1948. In fact, in some ways, it goes back millennia. Why do some people hate the jews? | Acton Line

In this episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks with Bill Courtney about coaching football, running a successful lumber business, and walking the red carpet with George Clooney and P. Diddy.In 2003, Bill began coaching the Manassas Tigers, an inner-city Memphis high school football team that had never once won a playoff game. By 2008, Courtney had helped build an award-winning football program that was chronicled in the Academy Award–winning documentary“Undefeated.” Today Bill coaches a different kind of team—an Army of Normal Folks. He’s the host of a podcast and leader of a movement that celebrates everyday people doing extraordinary things and that brings together Americans of all stripes committed to bridging our country’s divides and changing local communities for the better. Subscribe to our podcasts Coach Bill Courtney

Dr. Angela Dills is a labor economist who teaches at Western Carolina University and whose work focuses on the economics of education, crime, and health. In this episode of Acton Line, Angela and Dan Hugger discuss her research into the gender wage gap. Do women really earn only $0.83 for every $1.00 a men earn? Do the data represent a true “apples to apples” comparison? How much of the gender wage gap can be accounted for by discrimination? How do women participate in the labor market differently than men? What are promising new avenues of research that help economists understand the gender pay gap better? Angela Dills | Western Carolina University A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter | American Economic Review How to Achieve Gender Equality in Pay | Milken Institute Review Female Labor Force Intermittency and Current Earnings | SSRN The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations |Journal of Economic Literature Dame Stephanie Shirley: Why do ambitious women have flat heads? | YouTube India: Maternity leave increase | CNBC

In this episode, Dr. John Pinheiro speaks with Dr. Joseph Stuart about the complexity of the European Enlightenments: namely, the most common misconceptions and the mistake made by Christian and secular scholars alike who see in the Enlightenments only a simplistic conflict between faith and reason. Professor Stuart argues that Christians interacted with the Enlightenments by using one of three strategies: conflict, engagement, or retreat.Along the way, Dr. Pinheiro and Dr. Stuart uncover interesting tales of a Catholic Enlightenment in Italy, consider the connection between an authentic human anthropology and genuine liberty, and draw lessons about the unintended consequences of integral Catholic states. Subscribe to our podcasts

Dr. Bradley J. Birzer, Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and professor of history at Hillsdale College, discusses his new book,Mythic Realms: The Moral Imagination in Literature & Filmwith Dan Hugger. How doesMythic Realmsextend the author’s prior work on Christian humanism? What is the role of the moral imagination in navigating popular culture? What do the pulps have to do with romanticism? How did the Inklings seek to promote Christian humanism through genre fiction? How can the moral imagination be employed to answer life’s biggest questions and deepen religious faith? Subscribe to our podcasts Bradley Birzer | Hillsdale College Bradley J. Birzer’s Substack Mythic Realms, Bradley Birzer | Angelico Press Beyond Tenebrae, Bradley Birzer | Angelico Press Bradley J. Birzer, Author at The Imaginative Conservative Cronyism vs. free markets in ‘Stranger Things’ | Religion & Liberty Online Supernatural thriller Stranger Things shows the all-too-human evil of communism | Religion & Liberty Online The Western Heritage to 1600 | Hillsdale College The Rediscovery of Mystery by Russell Kirk | Imprimis (hillsdale.edu) The Science Fiction Novel — Imagination and Social Criticism | Internet Archive A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (Volume 1) The Dark Virtues of Robert E. Howard | Modern Age De Descriptione Temporum by C. S. Lewis | Internet Archive Christian Humanism and the Imaginative Mysteries | Religion & Liberty Online

Joseph Lemoine, deputy director of the Freedom and Prosperity Center at the Atlantic Council, joins Stephen Barrows, Acton’s COO, to discuss the Atlantic Council’s recently released 2023 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes. The Freedom and Prosperity Center created these indexes to provide a snapshot of the current distribution of freedom and prosperity around the world; gain a sense of the evolution of both over the past 28 years at global, regional, and national levels; and facilitate an exploration of the relationship between freedom and prosperity. Lemoine and Barrows explore the Freedom and Prosperity Center’s expansive understanding of what constitutes a free and prosperous society. Subscribe to our podcasts. Prosperity that Lasts: The 2023 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes | Atlantic Council

Better WAY Detroit engages, pays, feeds, and counsels homeless persons, and connects them to services for housing, medical and mental health care, and stable employment opportunities. Through their efforts, participants inspire community spirit, pride of ownership, and confidence in the dignity of work.While serving as participants, we also mentor them so that they can best help them find permanent employment after their service. Subscribe to our podcasts Better Way Detroit

Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan,Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at TheCatholic University of America,shares his thoughts on“Organizational Culture” withSarah Negri, Research Project Coordinator at the Acton Institute,at Acton University 2023. They discuss how culture affects us as humans without our being aware of it and how we in turn can affect culture through our free choices and actions. Conversation topics include theCompeting ValuesFramework of evaluating a company’s culture; “culture drivers” including what Dr. Vaidyanathan calls scripts, models and habits; the role of virtue in forming company culture; the principle of subsidiarity as a guidepost for good organizational culture; and the importance of integration in harmonizing the various social environments encountered by the individual. Subscribe to our podcasts “Organization Culture”, lecture at Acton University 2023 Competing Values Framework explanation Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global Southby Brandon Vaidyanathan NUMMI plant GM vs. Toyota culture example BrunelloCucinellifashion company story Beauty at Work National Study of Catholic Priests