Matt Weber ’06 – Seeking Veritas: From PC to Harvard, and Everything in Between

Show Notes

Matt Weber ’06 is the host of The CatholicTV Network series The Lens, author of two books, Fearing the Stigmata and Operating on Faith, and director of digital communications strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Weber, who created and hosts the education podcast The Harvard EdCast, delivered this talk at Providence College as part of the Office of the Chaplain’s Theology on Tap series.

What is Providence College Podcast?

The Providence College Podcast features interviews with interesting members of the Friar Family. These in-depth conversations with PC students, Dominicans, faculty, staff, and alumni provide a rich look into the lives of noteworthy Friars. Occasionally we will also bring you on-campus lectures and presentations. Go Friars!

00;00;00;04 - 00;00;14;23
Liz Kay
Welcome to the Providence College Podcast. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. If you like what you hear, please review and share with others. Email Podcast App. Providence Valley. Edu with questions or comments. Oh Friars.

00;00;15;12 - 00;00;39;06
Matt Chittim
Hello and welcome to the Providence College Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Cheatham, on this episode of the podcast. We have a lecture given by 26 grad Matt Weber called Seeking Veritas from PC to Harvard and everything in between. Matt was on campus on Thursday, February 16th to give this lecture as part of our Theology on Tap Lecture series sponsored by the Chaplain's office.

00;00;39;15 - 00;00;49;13
Matt Chittim
We hope you enjoyed this episode and if you do, we'd love for you to follow Matt podcast, the Harvard webcast as well. So thank you and go Friars.

00;00;50;19 - 00;01;15;00
Liz Kay
So this is really special for me. I've been out of Providence College for now, 11 years. I graduated in 2006, so just just temperature reading who looks at me and thinks I'm old, so. Right. Yeah. That's crazy. When I was when I was here, I considered myself, you know, young and hip and cool and all that stuff. I think that that has left me.

00;01;15;07 - 00;01;38;11
Liz Kay
But regardless, I'm here and I want it to. I did a little research on the Theology on Tap series, who's been to ones in the past. Really cool series. Thanks for having me and great job with this series. And I've done some research on apparently an old an old theology and have series had. There is an animal involved.

00;01;39;00 - 00;02;00;12
Liz Kay
Is that true? It was. Someone rented a bearded dragon, I heard. So I thought, you know, I had a bag right here. So I thought like, well, is it a requisite to bring an animal here? So I went out to the local pet store. I bought three little mice and I thought it'd be cool to kind of have them here.

00;02;00;21 - 00;02;28;03
Liz Kay
And then I heard that the dragon was played. You kind of held the dragon farther, so I was going to do the mice. And I've just been keeping them here. And then what is. I just kidding. I would never bring mice into a barn and see. And I. And I did. And I did. Were you freaked out? You're okay.

00;02;28;22 - 00;02;48;15
Liz Kay
They're actually mice. You can keep them, but they're not real. They're not real. You can keep them. What's extra confusing about that scene there is that I'm being recorded for the Providence College podcast, and without seeing what happened, there's going to be all sorts of people listening, trying to figure out what just happened. So you may need to comment on that.

00;02;49;12 - 00;03;15;26
Liz Kay
Okay. So I had considered not doing that and I regret doing that. But we're going to still move on. We're going to still move on. So the special thing about Providence Colleges, when you do when you do come back here as in a lot, it is unbelievable what what swell of emotion returns. And you look at places that you've been to or places that you've never even seen.

00;03;16;18 - 00;03;38;08
Liz Kay
When I pulled up, I looked at door hall and it looked like like this beautiful new building. And it was just I was so impressed with all the changes that have been here. But what's more, what's more telling to me is that you just remember the people. And if you're lucky enough, you get to run into some of those people, too.

00;03;38;15 - 00;04;08;13
Liz Kay
And the great joy that I just had prior to coming to this theology tap was I got to have dinner with the best group of people this side of the Mason-Dixon, which is the Dominican order, the Dominicans in the Priory. And it's amazing that you get to see all the Dominicans that you used to know, and then you get to meet some new ones and you just are so filled with hope and love for that order in that I don't know.

00;04;08;26 - 00;04;32;29
Liz Kay
Father Peter, Martyr that well, and I don't know all the, all the sort of Father Dominic Verner, all that. Wow, I knew your dad. I don't know them that well yet. They represent the goodness that I experienced when I was a student here and knowing the Dominicans and I wanted this this talk to be a little bit about.

00;04;33;02 - 00;05;00;27
Liz Kay
Yes. My personal journey. Yes, a case study is sort of portrait of what brought me to here today. But I wanted to also be a sort of homage and a way to thank the Dominicans for helping me become who I was, who I am. I came into Providence College very impressionable 18 year old, and I was very, very, very much shaped by the Dominicans and the people that I got to know here.

00;05;01;02 - 00;05;26;15
Liz Kay
And it's really special to know that Dominican, new and old are all just wonderful, wonderful people. So I want to I want to kind of start off with with that moment of coming to Providence College. You know, every story has to start with the beginning. And I'm going to start on my visit to Providence College. And it was the strangest thing.

00;05;26;15 - 00;05;59;04
Liz Kay
I got a feeling that I was part of this story. I got a feeling like I was a character in the Providence College story in the Book of Providence College, and it was something that is continued not during just those four years, but every other year since, to the point where I now devote a lot of my career, my research, my work to the art of storytelling and how storytelling is to me, one of the most profound ways to teach, but also to connect with people.

00;06;01;08 - 00;06;21;19
Liz Kay
If you said, Matt, have you ever been to mixed sales? I could say yes, and I could give you all sorts of info about MacPhail's. But I can also tell you that literally right here, when I turned 21 years old, I sat here with McPhail, Father MacPhail at MacPhail's, and I had and this is going to surprise some of you.

00;06;22;29 - 00;06;58;11
Liz Kay
I had my first beer at MacPhail's when I turned 21, and it was a special moment. And it was special because I got to experience it again with this wonderful Dominican father, MacPhail, who who has become my friend, who's just a fantastic guy. But also it just sort of represented the community that Providence College always provided me and the kind of person that you meet here, the kind of Dominicans that when I look back on my time, I'll go to the reunions, the five, the ten, the 15, the 25 year reunions.

00;06;58;22 - 00;07;26;18
Liz Kay
But it's kind of nice that every time I come back to PC, I can have a reunion with so many of my friends who live here, who live here. And I think they're absolutely a treasure. And in terms of the story of Providence College, they are the authors, and I think that there are so many cases of other people who go to other Catholic colleges, who go to other schools and universities.

00;07;26;24 - 00;07;59;02
Liz Kay
They don't get that special experience of knowing what it is to be Dominican educated. I had had an idea where tonight it's called theology on tap, but I was going to read out sorry, I was going to rename it something new. I was going to call it Dominicans on draft, providing a bottomless keg of wisdom, a hoppy 0pa variety OC.

00;07;59;18 - 00;08;43;18
Liz Kay
These guys like the OC and they're the only ones drinking the OC. You got to keep throwing jokes out that way. You know, you look back to the Bible, you look back to any gospel reading you hear on Sunday mass, you hear stories. Jesus was good at this. They were called parables. They taught, He taught through story. And it was that example that I learned at Providence College where I would walk away and I would I would go to the ninth year mass at Saint Dominic's Chapel.

00;08;43;18 - 00;09;12;05
Liz Kay
Monday through Thursday. I'd walk away with not just the gospel, but one of the fantastic Dominican interpretations of that gospel applied to us who were at that mass applied in a way that was relevant and applied in a way that was really, really well-reasoned, a true order of preachers. And I think about what a preacher does and what a storyteller does and how much there is that overlap.

00;09;13;20 - 00;09;33;26
Liz Kay
And I thought about how lucky I was for four years to go to that mass to have the Dominicans there. And then my senior year, I think the Monday night with Father Shanley, the Tuesday was Father Guido. I think Father Sicard said one. I mean, it was like really so special. Are you motioning to Guido? Yeah. Okay, good.

00;09;33;26 - 00;10;02;04
Liz Kay
Yeah. I love Father Guido, too. I get to see Father Guido today. Father Guido is, like, so special. And I was even thinking about all the Dominicans. And it pains me that I don't know if. If all of you in this room had the opportunity to get to know Father Peterson, who just passed away. But when he passed away, I went back and I Googled Father Peterson in my Gmail, and I read all of his writings to me over those past years now.

00;10;02;26 - 00;10;23;17
Liz Kay
And it was like he was he was there and it was great to connect with him again through his writing. He was a special guy. If you remember that scene at Fenway Park in 1999 during the All-Star Game, when Ted Williams came out and all the old baseball players came around and looked at Ted Williams and they reveled in him and they talked to him and they shook his hand.

00;10;23;23 - 00;10;56;25
Liz Kay
That's kind of how I looked at Father Peterson. He was the Ted Williams. He knew the old. He represented the good and great of this school, a big loss. But someone who is just so embedded in my experience here and knowing that you can always revisit a friend, you can always revisit a friend at Providence College. Thinking back to all the experiences that I've had, and I know in the intro they said I studied informal learning.

00;10;57;21 - 00;11;28;17
Liz Kay
Well, what is that? By definition, it's learning that happens outside of the classroom. And I remember when I started college and how many seniors are in the room right now, good group juniors. Sophomores. Okay, freshmen. So it's good to know. You know, I thought back to what my dad said to me, took me to Friendly's, you know what Friendly's is?

00;11;29;11 - 00;11;51;26
Liz Kay
Woo! This guy likes Friendly's. Okay, good. Took me to Friendly's and he said, Matt, the classroom, the courses, the degree. It's really important, but it's so much of what happens in between. That is where your character builds that is where you really become who you are. And I'm entrusting you to the Dominicans for the next four years to help mold your character in the way that I have for the past 18 years.

00;11;52;29 - 00;12;08;03
Liz Kay
And that was a good bet. I'm my dad and I remember taking that advice and thinking, okay, yeah, I'm going to make sure I do all my classwork, I'm going to do as well as I can. I'm going to thrive, but I'm really going to try and sink my teeth into a bunch of stuff, a bunch of stuff.

00;12;08;06 - 00;12;30;04
Liz Kay
And in retrospect, probably too much stuff. And I came in. Did urban action, does that still exist? Okay, Did urban action? And we cleaned up some parks and then like the first weekend, the first thing you could do was run for student Congress. So I was like, okay, well, let me just get involved as much as possible in it.

00;12;30;04 - 00;13;05;17
Liz Kay
And I ran for freshman class president, and this is where my interesting friendship with other people started, who at the time he was the vice president of student affairs, he was the advisor to the student government. And regrettably, I asked my freshman class, What do you all want this year? I was trying to be a good constituent based student government leader, and they said, we don't want pride of that.

00;13;05;17 - 00;13;28;18
Liz Kay
Those still exist, right? Okay, good. And they said, we don't want parades. And I was like, I don't know what that word means, but I want to represent you, my students. So I ran my freshman year. So we're going to try and do our best to eliminate parade and I found out what it was. I was like, okay, this like, I don't think that's going to happen.

00;13;28;18 - 00;13;49;15
Liz Kay
But again, I was trying to commit to this and I won not just based on that. I also successfully was able to get a ripped up bus stop on the campus. Woo Yeah, you heard that, which has since been removed with the remodel. But they sent it to me. They shifted to my home in Medford. They didn't do that.

00;13;50;18 - 00;14;16;24
Liz Kay
And it was one of these things where at that point Father MacPhail said, you know, you really that's not going to happen. You're not going to do the potatoes thing. And and it was a wonderful four years of working with Father MacPhail, starting off with that experience of me kind of being knuckle the knuckle against him. And then by my senior year, we were going out monthly for steaks on Federal Hill and just getting to know him in a way.

00;14;17;04 - 00;14;45;02
Liz Kay
And most recently, just this past month in December, he came to Boston. We visited and took in a concert and just such good friends, such good people, Dominicans on draft. So it's all the things that I learned in Congress. I was in the Friars Club, I was in campus ministry, I was a lector, I was a Eucharistic minister, I was an orientation leader.

00;14;45;03 - 00;15;10;22
Liz Kay
I was a three year resident assistant in the best dorm ever to exist in human history. Someone said at Fennell Hall, And what I loved about Fennell Hall is that it just it had all sorts of wonderful people in there. Now, someone you may not have been encounter, but again, another Dominican, a Dominican brother named Brother Kevin, who you may have seen pictured.

00;15;10;22 - 00;15;31;17
Liz Kay
He was, I believe, the last Dominican brother. And you can correct me if I'm wrong to have the Dalmatian on campus. He was the advisor to the Friars Club, Brother Kevin. I don't think he'd be upset if he heard me saying this. He said, Now you live in Fennell said, Yes. He goes, So which hell are you? I said, L, what are you talking about?

00;15;32;03 - 00;16;02;05
Liz Kay
Fennell Hall said, For losers, lovers and loners. Which one are you? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. It's just very funny. And then someone overheard and said, Kevin, you live in Fennell Hall? I think at one point he did. I, I wasn't there when he did. And it was one of these experiences where these Dominicans, they taught me this sense of humor.

00;16;02;18 - 00;16;23;26
Liz Kay
They taught me to empower myself to do things, to take pride in where I lived. To the point my senior year at Fennell Hall, I asked Father Ken Sicard, I said, You know, you know that tradition at Notre Dame when the football players, they come down the stairs and they hit that top thing. I think it says Play like a champion today.

00;16;24;16 - 00;16;44;10
Liz Kay
It's like a Notre Dame football tradition. I thought, what if we had seen a whole lot of a lot of Fennell Hall pride by my fourth year? So what if we assimilate left and have something to hit, something to empower us, something to bring with us as we left and came to this sort of, you know, this this storm?

00;16;45;11 - 00;17;12;19
Liz Kay
And I said, is it possible to design a little plaque that says Our Lady Queen of Fennell, pray for us? And he looked at me and father, cancer care goes, I said, Can there be? And our lady, Queen of Fennell, he goes, Our lady is clean to all. And I went home that weekend with my dad. We built a little wooden thing.

00;17;12;26 - 00;17;29;20
Liz Kay
I bought a mary statue and I walked it in the Fennell put that thing up there was really stiff glue so that no one could rip it off because of all things. I wanted that to really remain sacred and I wanted people to walk by. And I was an hour at the time, so I said, You know what?

00;17;29;20 - 00;17;49;22
Liz Kay
You guys are leaving. Just touch it. Take Mary with you on campus. Come home to Mary, know she's praying for you. And we had a little ceremony at Fennell Hall with Father Ted and he bless that. And we had our lady Queen of Fennell pray for us. And I just thought, Yeah, I like that. Was that for Mary or Fennell?

00;17;50;20 - 00;18;28;02
Liz Kay
Both. Okay, good. And I just kept thinking back to all the Dominicans. I learned humility from the Dominicans. Talk about informal education, but also formal education. My junior year, I had heard all sorts of great things about Father Cunningham, former president of Providence College in Cunningham Square, named after Father Cunningham, a great man. My mother had went to Providence College in the seventies and knew him and loved him, and I thought, Well, I'd love to be able to interact and learn from Father Cunningham.

00;18;28;05 - 00;18;47;08
Liz Kay
I don't know what course he's teaching. I don't know what it is, but I want to take a course with Father Cunningham before I graduate. Now, by my junior year, I was really, really busy. I was running the Providence College Television Channel, which involved making sure that every weekend, all hours of the weekend were programed with original content.

00;18;47;19 - 00;19;09;06
Liz Kay
Now, at the time there was no film minor and there was no fancy room like that. Providence College TV was me and whoever else I could kind of con into making videos with me on the on the evenings. So instead of really, really like putting together stuff, bringing over the DVDs, you know, the DVD, DVD, okay, It's like a laser disk.

00;19;09;06 - 00;19;48;08
Liz Kay
It's like a laser disc or like a circular cassette. And and it was one of these things where I looked at what Father Cunningham was teaching, and it was ethics. Friday morning, 8 a.m. in the Priory. I want you to know that if you have a big map of campus, Ferro is right here. Okay? The Priory. I don't want to in the parking lot.

00;19;49;22 - 00;20;23;27
Liz Kay
Also 8 a.m. to me was like probably 4 a.m. to most normal people because I was going to bed around 2:30 a.m. with my small laser discs and I took that class. I had never taken an ethics course in my entire life and I walked away bleary eyed after a semester, learned a heck of a lot. I got my first C plus ever in the history of my academic career.

00;20;24;27 - 00;20;44;11
Liz Kay
I was a kid. I always thought I was smart and I kind of thought I was ethical. And now I have this hero of mine, the president of Providence College, and I got a C for the work with C plus work. It was a bad fit for me to think that I could do well in that class. I learned humility.

00;20;44;27 - 00;21;10;08
Liz Kay
I learned what time management was, what energy management was. And I always was worried that one day, if I ever, ever ran for office and they were trying to dig up dirt on me, they're going to go to my college transcripts. They're going to go, this guy got a C plus an ethics. Really trust him. But here's the other Father Cunningham story.

00;21;10;17 - 00;21;32;13
Liz Kay
When I was a senior, I had done enough student government at the sort of local level, and I was ready to go federal. And I ran for student Congress, president, student body president, and I won that. And it came with you got to give a speech. I got to give a speech at one of these sort of accepted student days.

00;21;32;13 - 00;21;58;01
Liz Kay
And I had a line in there where I was going to say a few words throughout the speech before the accepted students. One was during my senior year when Father Shanley became president and as student body president, I got to bring the greetings from the students to Father Shanley. I had known very little about him. I knew Father Shanley was an athlete.

00;21;58;02 - 00;22;28;18
Liz Kay
I knew he was a scholar, and I knew he loved opera and golf. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm going to put some words together and welcome Father Shanley as as delicately and as personally as possible. And I had a line in there and I said, I wish you a presidency furthest from the fate of B, I see e, t apostrophe S's.

00;22;28;26 - 00;22;56;08
Liz Kay
Carmen, this is an opera reference that I looked up. I don't know anything about opera, but I wanted to connect during this speech and I knew he liked opera and I wanted to put in a clever line there. God, I wish you a fate. The opposite of the easy e t apostrophe S's, Carmen and a presidency that won't hook or slice, but go right down the middle land on the fairway.

00;22;56;08 - 00;23;26;10
Liz Kay
That was the golf reference. I knew that one. And I was about to give this speech my senior year in front of the governor. Donald Carcieri was there. All the congressmen, all the nobility of all of Rhode Island and all of the people at P.S. and I happened to run into Father Cunningham, who was sitting behind me on the dais.

00;23;27;16 - 00;24;01;11
Liz Kay
And I said, I know you like opera, just checking. It's pronounced Bizet, right? Isee Bizet. And he looked at me and said, Oh, you know, it's a busy and I know that's a really obscure reference for right now, but if I got up there in front of everyone and mispronounced Dessaix as a reference to opera, I don't think people would have taken away anything, but that guy's an idiot.

00;24;02;04 - 00;24;54;24
Liz Kay
Probably get C pluses. They probably would have. And I think back lovingly when I do pass. It's not just the building of Cunningham or the the square, but I always make sure to tip my hat and bless myself when I pass the the graveyard in the middle of campus. And I'm glad that's at the center of campus. I guess my hope for you all is that and whatever time you have left here, make sure to make sure I think tap into what I think is PCC's greatest treasure, which is this order of preachers, these people in the tradition of Saint Dominic, in the tradition of Jesus, who tell stories, who preach, who teach through preaching.

00;24;57;04 - 00;25;18;01
Liz Kay
And I want you to not just experience who they are in the classroom first. You're kind of doing this today. As I'm looking around, I think there's at least four Dominicans in this room. You get to know them as people learn from them. That is where I really earned my Bachelor of Arts and my degree. Yes, has all of the sort of credits associated with it.

00;25;18;28 - 00;25;48;02
Liz Kay
But in many ways, this week, this Valentine's Day week, when I was thinking about what is it that I want to talk about in terms of Veritas truth, the motto of both Providence College, where I learn truth, the motto of Harvard, where I now try and teach truth. What is it about Veritas that is so important in a post-truth world?

00;25;48;02 - 00;26;32;14
Liz Kay
And who is sharing the truth here? So my homework to you all is get to know a Dominican or get to know a Dominican better. Learn them, love them. Valentine's Day. We often associate with this sort of kissy roses and all that stuff, but true love goes a lot deeper. And I think this place is unequivocally a place that I can tell you I love from the bottom of my heart and I never will not be in love with this place, because I'm pretty sure this place will never not have Dominicans.

00;26;33;06 - 00;27;06;20
Liz Kay
They are the heart of this campus. The soul of this campus, and it keeps pumping new and old. Thank you. So now I'm going to pick up the nice thing. We're going to do that again. This time we're going to laugh so that the podcast can edit it better. Okay, I do want you all. You can leave if you want, but that was kind of like, of course you can live right?

00;27;06;20 - 00;27;39;26
Liz Kay
But I want you to kind of think about your time here. Think about it like a Google map and you can drop down little pins and then each pin is not. Well, that's where I took economics and that's where I did this. Each pin is really that's a conversation I had with him, and that's where I learned that it's a beautiful thing to not just re observe those pins, to revisit those pins, but to create them even after you graduate, especially for the seniors in this room.

00;27;40;04 - 00;28;06;13
Liz Kay
The best part about Providence is it's not going anywhere. And I guess for me, you can look at my whole story online. You can get all the bios stuff. But I wanted to kind of bring to you all today this love on a week dedicated to love for this place and these people. And I wanted to essentially just put myself out there to you all as vulnerable or as loving as I can be.

00;28;06;19 - 00;28;28;01
Liz Kay
What can I do to help? What questions do you have? Do you want to start a TV show? Do you want to know a good church in Boston? Do you want to know what it's like to leave the wonderful homilies of the Dominicans and to go into this sort of, you know, difficult world of not knowing necessarily how you want to practice your faith outside of the college life.

00;28;28;15 - 00;28;51;21
Liz Kay
Do you want to know what it's like to fall in love and propose to your wife and marry her and know that you're going to have a baby in about a month and about how exciting that is a little bit, how nervous that is, Knowing that right now with my phone in airplane mode, I could be getting a text saying, I'm in labor, you know, I'm all here with you.

00;28;51;21 - 00;29;21;21
Liz Kay
Please pray that that's not happening. Yes. Oh, he's wearing a Harvard shirt. Okay, I will say this much. I like it. I like it. But you know. What's that? What's on the top of his head? I will say this much. So I've written two books with Loyola Press, a Jesuit publication, and the first book in the bio, which they wrote, refers to me as Harvard graduate Matt Weber.

00;29;22;02 - 00;29;46;18
Liz Kay
And I give this book to some friends, namely the president, father's family, and it looks fine, but why didn't you mentioned P.S. in the bio? And I think like, you know what, I really should I will demand that in my next contract negotiation that I have control over PC because PC is my intellectual is my spiritual home. But Harvard is where I do hang my hat now.

00;29;47;10 - 00;30;13;02
Liz Kay
And there's a good cadre of PC people who go over to Harvard to study or to work or to teach. And I'd be more than happy to give you all a tour. I'd be more than happy to help you out with what it is that you want to study there, in addition to my work at Harvard. So I teach and I'm an administrator specifically at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which, for those of you who don't know, is the intellectual home of Sesame Street.

00;30;13;02 - 00;30;38;25
Liz Kay
I'm not joking. 40 plus years ago, Sesame Street professor at the Ed School named Jerry Loesser created with Joan against Cooney, Sesame Workshop, the Children's Children's Public Television. They're on PBS and every year they consider Sesame Street an experiment. And that was actually what attracted me to Harvard. I was doing all sorts of work, came right from here.

00;30;38;25 - 00;31;15;16
Liz Kay
I went right to Boston College. I was so in love with Catholic higher education. I got a master's degree at Boston College to study Catholic higher education. And then at age 25 and this may happen to you and it's okay, you'll turn out fine at age 25, I had a quarter life crisis because I thought myself going to be the associate or director, associate director, director of admissions for the School of Theology and ministry, which is great on paper, but most of the time it's just database management and stressing out about numbers and recruiting and being away from your family and your loved ones.

00;31;15;25 - 00;31;34;07
Liz Kay
And I thought, I don't want to do this. And I'm a creative person. I miss making videos at P.S., I miss the creativity, the storytelling. It's hard to tell a story with some of the data that I was sort of drowning in, and I literally thought, Well, what is it that I love? What is it that I want to do?

00;31;35;06 - 00;32;05;16
Liz Kay
And at this time, I didn't even have a girlfriend. I seriously considered becoming a Dominican. And I met with Father Sicard about it. We discussed it, and I decided that I really wanted to have a family life and be married and have children. But my love for the Dominicans, obviously, right, never, never went away. And and it was one of these things where, you know, it's it's just a it's a beautiful thing.

00;32;06;04 - 00;32;27;08
Liz Kay
It's a beautiful thing to to be able to to find your calling. And I realized that I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to have fun with it. And I wanted to educate. I wanted to go to work every day and not just care about the bottom line, but as they call the triple bottom line, which involves some values in addition to money.

00;32;27;08 - 00;32;52;20
Liz Kay
I thought, Well, I love Sesame Street. I love everything on PBS. I love Mister Rogers neighborhood. Let me figure out how I can do that work. I want to teach kids. I want to be there. Mr. Rogers and his social emotional learning. What he was doing at that time through TV was amazing. Sesame Street. I'd be watching it, singing along, and at the end my mom's going, He's secretly learning what I thought I was watching puppets, and I thought, Let me do that.

00;32;52;29 - 00;33;13;20
Liz Kay
Let me go to New York City and become a member of the Sesame Street team. And at this time we did have the Internet. I Googled literally something to the effect of can you tell me how to get how to get to Sesame Street? And I found out there's essentially two ways. One, you move to New York, you become a standup comedian.

00;33;13;25 - 00;33;50;00
Liz Kay
They like your writing and you're brought in on the entertainment side or two. You go to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which has a really nice pipeline to Sesame Workshop, and you go through the education route. And I said, Let me do that. I just finished a master's degree at ABC. But again, I was having this crisis and I met with one more year of graduate studies and I went there and it was a totally crazy experience because while I was there, I realize there's about ten or 12 other people trying to tell the stories on Sesame Street trying to work there.

00;33;50;20 - 00;34;14;19
Liz Kay
And this is also at the same time when I sort of left the comfy confines of being at Providence College or at Boston College, I didn't really know how to be a Catholic outside of these sort of Catholic bubbles, these Catholic ecosystems. I was 25 years old and I honestly didn't know how to be Catholic when most of the people the majority of the people were not.

00;34;15;17 - 00;34;38;00
Liz Kay
I didn't know how to talk about my faith. I didn't know how to communicate about it. And I realized, well, here I'm in, here I am in a graduate school of education. There's certainly a lot of people here. What if I just shift gears and focus less on children's media production, numeracy and literacy and focus on something which I think is globally important, but certainly locally important, which is religious literacy.

00;34;38;13 - 00;35;01;07
Liz Kay
And I went to my advisor and I said, you know what, I'd like to shift gears. I want to focus on Catholic media and how people represent themselves through religion and through media. And I did my little case study. There's a couple of channels out there, one's EWTN down in Alabama, and one was this sort of upstart out of Watertown, Massachusetts, about four miles from Harvard's campus called Catholic TV.

00;35;02;04 - 00;35;24;26
Liz Kay
Can you guess what kind of network it's called? Was it Catholic TV? And I watched that for about a week and there was all sorts of good Bible Bible teaching the the little fours and the five year olds and First Communion training. And there was all sorts of elderly nuns praying the rosary, but there was nothing for like the 18 to 40 year old.

00;35;25;12 - 00;35;48;15
Liz Kay
There was nothing there on the whole network of programing that that connected with me, connected with my heart, my mind, my soul. And I kept thinking, well, you know what? Remembering back to my old grade school notebook planner, which had very, very overused quotes in it. One of them was Gandhi's that I remembered, and it was be the change you wish to see in the world.

00;35;48;15 - 00;36;14;16
Liz Kay
And I thought, if no one on TV looks like me, why can't it be me? And I walked over to Catholic TV and I tried to get an appointment with the president that did not work. And I called them and I called the general manager. And after about a month of being pretty persistent, I got 10 minutes with the president of Catholic TV, Bishop Robert Reed, and the general manager and vice president Jay Farren.

00;36;14;16 - 00;36;38;22
Liz Kay
And I walked into the room, had my whole laptop in there. I had all my proposals, everything. I sat in there and they looked at me and they said, okay, what do you got for us, Mark? For those of you who don't know, my name is Matt and and what I done is instead of tell them what I want to do and you get 10 minutes of these folks is hard.

00;36;39;19 - 00;36;58;08
Liz Kay
And this was something that I kind of learned at PC, which is a little bit go above and beyond, communicate in the way that you can best. I can go walk into a room and shark take pinch, pitch someone on something, and at the end of it they go, Cool, I'd love to see what it looks like. Let's talk in six months.

00;36;58;08 - 00;37;13;24
Liz Kay
When I was in class here with Charlotte O'Kelly, a sociology class, I walked up to her and said, Hey, you know, I don't mind writing a 20 page essay, but I'd love to make a short documentary about human relations in the workplace. And she said, Go ahead and do it. That was one of my favorite projects I ever made here.

00;37;14;13 - 00;37;33;16
Liz Kay
I thought, if you can go above and beyond and communicate in the best way, the God given talent that you all know you have, whether it's music, whether it's poetry, whether it's writing, whatever it is, use it and know how to use it. Don't be afraid to interject it in places where it's typically not. That, to me is what creativity is.

00;37;33;26 - 00;37;52;04
Liz Kay
It's taking two things that are usually never connected and merging them for the definition of creativity. But to me it is something that really represents it. And I flipped my laptop around on both the president and the vice president, and I hit play and I had made a short film of what I would have wanted to see on Catholic TV.

00;37;53;09 - 00;38;26;20
Liz Kay
And after 2 minutes they looked at me and they said, Will air this tomorrow. When can we have more? And that was in 2009. I'm celebrating you to do the math right. In your view and your father, Dominic Verner. Okay. Okay. Eight years of Catholic TV, eight years representing what I always thought was seeing my faith through a Catholic lens, be able to walk out in the world not so dissimilar from what one of his greatest treasures is Mike Leonard.

00;38;26;20 - 00;38;46;23
Liz Kay
What he did for the NBC, The Today Show. Kids go out. You could tell stories of people and I could go out and tell stories of people as it relates to my faith. This is a very Ignatian principle of God in all things which I picked up at ABC. But it was something that I was very proud to do and who what happens when you do crazy things?

00;38;46;27 - 00;39;09;08
Liz Kay
You start your TV show, your TV show gets picked up, you're now producing one a week publisher in Chicago calls you and said they've been watching your TV show and they're wondering if you want to write a book. So you write that book. You go out on a speaking tour, you share that book out with people. You start talking at conferences, you meet the girl, your dreams.

00;39;09;08 - 00;39;47;21
Liz Kay
In the process, you marry her. You almost die. Three months after the honeymoon, after my wife took the valve in sickness and in health, I was laying on a gurney at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and my stomach literally ruptured, removing the bottom third of it. So me back up, stapling me up and saying, Get well in 30 days, having two post-operative infections being the biggest pain to your new wife you've ever been, and then when you publish, your comes back to you six months later and says, what do you want to write another book about?

00;39;48;08 - 00;40;16;03
Liz Kay
And I'd like to write a 35,000 word thank you note to my wife for showing me a depth of love when I was at my most unlovable. And that was my second book, Operating on Faith, you know, And that kind of leaves me all. Do you hear today? It started here at Providence College. That story from the master Storytellers.

00;40;16;03 - 00;40;41;23
Liz Kay
I just encourage you all to keep listening and telling your stories. I've already ended this talk once, so I don't know what to do now. So I'm going to transition in another graphic over coffee. I'm going to switch gears. I do have some family in the room. My brother in law has a brother and he is here. And I'm very grateful that he's here and he's got a really cool girlfriend.

00;40;41;29 - 00;41;05;08
Liz Kay
So I got you this too. Cute hug besties joins say, okay, I love these guys. We don't know what we are. We're family, but I don't know how they're so blood related. But I wish there was. And then who's the guy who is doing the woo in the back? This guy Who is it? I think it's this guy, Mr. Flannel.

00;41;05;13 - 00;41;31;27
Liz Kay
I bought a really weird, really weird Valentine's great gift for a special participant. This is a puffer bear, and. And it lights up. So there you go, my friend. There you go. Okay, everybody wins. Free pizza and puffin bears. And then, yeah, the rest is pretty. You know, if you think that's true, the rest is, I promise you, junkie.

00;41;32;03 - 00;41;51;22
Liz Kay
So. So I don't want go over my time. And I also remember being a student be like, Oh, come on, this guy when he's going to wrap up so I can leave politely. But if you have any questions, let me know. And I can do the walk around. Just raise your hand if you want to confidentially ask the questions whispering in someone else's ear.

00;41;52;01 - 00;42;10;00
Liz Kay
My friend wants to know. So whatever questions you want, I can help you with the book, the TV stuff, Boston Life movie on my face. So my wife and I ended up buying a house a little bit outside near Tufts University. And we've got the kid on the way. We belong to Saint Raphael's Parish, which is a great parish.

00;42;10;16 - 00;42;31;15
Liz Kay
If you're gonna move to Boston, I can give you some definite recommendations for both churches and food, which is important, too. So here's a question. We're doing so much talking. Do you have a question? Should I cold call people like now? No. So. Well, you. What's the Harvard connection with you? I forget a guy in the hockey team gave me a sweatshirt.

00;42;31;19 - 00;42;38;14
Liz Kay
Oh, okay. I like it. That's a good connection that sometimes I got a question. Yeah. Okay. Oh, what's your favorite.

00;42;38;14 - 00;42;39;28
Matt Chittim
Story about Providence College?

00;42;40;23 - 00;43;00;24
Liz Kay
Oh, gosh. I mean, there's so there's so many. There's so many. I'll tell you a fun one. This isn't my favorite one, but I'll tell you, I think you know what? I'll tell you kind of like a good story about humility. These are two stories I'll tell you, two that are related to the is the quad's down in front of so called the cultural quad?

00;43;01;23 - 00;43;27;23
Liz Kay
No. So when I was in Seattle, there was no buildings around, there was no suites, there was no Smiths, there was nothing. There's a parking lot. And they built this building. We're going to call it the cultural quad. It'll catch on in 11 years and it didn't work. So I'll tell you, the first story is I again would edit those videos for PC TV late in the evening, and then I would order pizza from this guy knows Francis Golden crust.

00;43;28;14 - 00;43;48;01
Liz Kay
You've got to give the puffer beer back. You got to keep it. I don't know if people say like golden crust, it's okay. It was close to fennel and they would come and listen. They were like, you know why? It's like one in the morning. We'll be there and a half hour. Okay, I'm starving and editing my video.

00;43;48;08 - 00;44;04;15
Liz Kay
They're not there. They're not there. They're not there. That night I had also made a movie with some of my friends that I was editing, and it was like a horror film. And we were kind of acting like this is right after the movie Saw came out. Remember the movie saw, It's like people chained in a bathroom and there was just a saw in the room.

00;44;05;01 - 00;44;24;23
Liz Kay
So I jokingly came up with a spoof called Slice, and it's people changed in I think it was the Saint Joe's bathroom with a butter knife in the room, and they had to determine what to do to get out. So we made this stupid short film and I was editing it and my pizza wasn't coming and I was pissed and I was pissed and I called them up.

00;44;24;23 - 00;44;43;19
Liz Kay
I said, Where's the pizza? And it's like, We've been trying to call you. Your phone's been off my phone. It died. Now it's like 230. They're tired, I'm tired, I'm hungry. And this guy goes, I will be there in like 5 minutes. You better be there. And I ran out to the front door and I'm like, I kind of messed up and I got to get my big tip in hand.

00;44;43;29 - 00;45;06;28
Liz Kay
And he comes running up because you. Oh, my gosh, Are you okay? I still had the blood from Slice on my face, and all of a sudden he wasn't mad at me. He thought like, you know, there's a reason my phone was off. I was probably, you know, getting harassed. So anyway, that was one funny story. And then the other spectrum of that is I'm in the sort of zone of the unexpected.

00;45;07;09 - 00;45;32;29
Liz Kay
You also do that Mr. PC pageant here. Not so much. First, what's this guy? Oh, you know, no surprise. No surprise. 2005 winner. Hey, how about that? We'll be on it. That was actually good. So I won that thing in 2005 and it was kind of like a joke. And I played my harmonica and it was hosted by Mr. Cooper from Haiti with Mr. Cooper, which was a show during VHS days.

00;45;34;08 - 00;46;05;05
Liz Kay
And it was the damnedest thing. I won that thing. They give you like a ceramic crown, but you got a Burger King crown. Okay. Wow, man, the economy, they're outsourcing the crowns now, and they had a custom custom sweatshirt that says Mr. P.C. on it with, like a picture of a crown and they drape it over you. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to wear this.

00;46;05;05 - 00;46;23;00
Liz Kay
They draped over me. They put me a crown on me, and they're like, okay, you won great. And everyone laughed. And I was just kind of sitting there picking up my stuff. And I was like, you know, I don't know what to do now. And I kind of walked and this is this guy's like, Definitely a fennel elixir.

00;46;23;07 - 00;47;00;03
Liz Kay
I want you to go walk back to fennel. Look around. And there's a big tree on the cultural quad. And I just kind of sat there and it was one of the loneliest moments of my four years there. And I that night just really celebrated with God. And it was a weird thing to have had the emotion of being crowned Mr. Providence College and then walking away, sitting under a tree by yourself that night in prayer and then going back to your room and probably ordering pizza.

00;47;00;26 - 00;47;23;19
Liz Kay
So when you ask favorite moment, that's not necessarily a favorite of mine, but it's a memorable one. What else? Yeah, this. Okay, I got it. What's this guy's name? Another Michael. Oh, man. Jeez. Okay, the economy's back up. Yeah. No crowns for two. My only time for. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I talk. I talk too much. Oh, good.

00;47;24;16 - 00;47;25;18
Liz Kay
What's the story?

00;47;26;10 - 00;47;46;23
Matt Weber
So kind. Really? I'm a senior sommelier. U.P.S. What was your struggle with maybe not having the accessibility to spiritual directors on campus? If if you need some guidance, I could go down the campus ministry. Somebody down? What is it like off campus your senior year?

00;47;46;26 - 00;48;09;22
Liz Kay
Yeah, it's a and again, as much as the Dominicans or the people that you met here will allow it. Um, like I, I'm, I emailed Father Guido many years afterwards. I saw him today for the first time in years. But he was such a force in my life during, during school, afterwards, if you see him, please give him a hug for me.

00;48;09;22 - 00;48;34;23
Liz Kay
And this is from Matt. He's really appreciative. Uh, I'm not going to do that. You're not going to hold back. Okay. Someone else talk about. Just say thanks to him. You know, you don't hug him, but. But there are still the relationships that you have here that I would say try and keep up as much as possible. If they're okay with that, if they have the time and the commitment, not like on a daily basis or whatever.

00;48;34;23 - 00;49;00;03
Liz Kay
But if you need spiritual direction and you forge relationships here, um, they don't go away. Friendships don't go away. And within friendship, it's a friendship between you, that person through, through Christ. And it's a, it's a beautiful thing. And until you maybe get your feet on solid ground in a community, then maybe you can go, okay, so I'm less part of the Providence College community and now I'm more part of this community.

00;49;00;10 - 00;49;16;07
Liz Kay
How do I want to base my faith, faith around that? It took me a while in Boston. You know, people use the word I don't like this term. They church shop or whatever. They move to a city, they check it all the different parishes. They figure out where's the young adult mass for me at Boston College, said Ignatius of Loyola.

00;49;16;07 - 00;49;43;26
Liz Kay
It's a diocesan parish on the campus, practically. And I really took to the 5:30 p.m. Sunday night mass, and it wasn't all that different from some of the masses here. As young adults, I never did any music ministry here. I played the harmonica and I pitched to the young adult music ministry Mass at the Ignatius is a you know, you got a drum, a bass, two guitars and a flute.

00;49;44;06 - 00;50;06;23
Liz Kay
Could you use a harmonica player? And they literally said, Sure, show up. And for two years I played harmonica at church and you think it's crazy, But it actually sounded okay. So it's like a it takes the role of like the violin and the sort of cuteness. Is that an accurate term to use to say, okay, the actual music majors here.

00;50;07;10 - 00;50;19;01
Liz Kay
So so Seth says much connected here, but also know that like you'll have roots here, but some branches don't just rely on this. That's A great question indicative of a of Mr. People Yeah.