{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Trinity Forum Conversations","title":"Cultivating a Life of Learning with Zena Hitz ","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1878,"description":"Cultivating a Life of Learning with Zena Hitz \nHow can we cultivate the habits and discipline required for a life of learning, especially in an age of distraction? And is such a life really worth it?\n\nZena Hitz is a humanities scholar and author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, and she joins our podcast to argue that few experiences are as formative and fulfilling as the cultivation of a rich inner life of learning and contemplation:\n“Virtually any intellectual activity, any piece of thinking or contemplation involves others. Even just sitting reading a book, there's an author that wrote that book and there are characters within the book that the author is sharing with you. And a lot of what I think we do and in a great books education is you encounter the minds of these authors and…even if they're long dead you see something about who they were and what they saw. So there's a human connection at the bottom of it.”\nLearning in Community, and the need for Perseverance\nZena argues that learning is worth doing for its own sake, as something intrinsically valuable, reflective of, and fortifying to our dignity as human beings and a vital part of the good life. And when we find our energy flagging or our motives for learning to be mixed, community and perseverance are the necessary prescription for deepening and sustaining our intellectual lives.\n\nOur podcast is an edited version of an Online Conversation with Zena from September, 2022. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.\nLearn more about Zena Hitz.\nAuthors and books mentioned in the conversation:\n\nLost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of the Intellectual Life, by Zena Hitz\nAugustine\nPlato\nAristotle\nJonathan Haidt\nDavid Hume\nJessica Hooten Wilson\n\nRelated Trinity Forum Readings:\nOn Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas\nOn Friendship, by Cicero\nMan’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl\nAugustine’s Confessions\nThe Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day\nWrestling with God, by...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/LC6b2lFM_r_3xEJCzvD8r7UblHhgtgss5nBJ4X1mqD4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE3OTk3LzE2MTM1/MzUwNjEtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}