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The Sword&Spade podcast is about...
Jason M. Craig (01:29.52)
Friends and subscribers, welcome back to the sword and spade podcast—the podcast that was born out of a magazine that we have been dedicated to publishing since like 2017. We've been dedicated to only talking and publishing and working with men that are really doing things in the trenches of the real world Especially those that are wielding the spade building stuff doing things and not just whining on the internet
My friend, Jacob, a mom who's on today. Also, I think we actually started talking because he was a part of a magazine, New Polity. New Polity is like the super heady version of Sword and Spade and Sword and Spade is the low brow entry point for a lot of the big ideas. But I think we share a lot of those. In fact, I think we started talking after publishing an issue on retirement. It's got got y'all's attention.
Dr. Jacob Imam (02:10.26)
Hahaha.
Dr. Jacob Imam (02:22.958)
That's right, I remember that. That's right. No, I think I say it as not the low brow, but the approachable. You have to phrase, give yourself more credit.
Jason M. Craig (02:25.091)
Yeah, and then we started talking.
Jason M. Craig (02:30.513)
Mm. Approachable. Thank you. I appreciate it. Anymore. Do you want to say some more? That's fine. But the magazine, how great it is. Not me. Not me. Anyway, Jacob had also was had the luxury of seeing you the first time you had grits, which was at my farm. That was at my farm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (02:36.643)
Well, you have a great beard and a good family. So yeah, there you go.
Dr. Jacob Imam (02:48.75)
Oh, that's true. What a transformative moment in my life that was.
Jason M. Craig (02:54.641)
And when Mark Barnes left his wallet at my house, which is some sort of symbolic, yeah, more of the same.
Dr. Jacob Imam (02:59.889)
that was, yeah, that was more, that was, was certainly symbolic, but pretty par for the course.
Jason M. Craig (03:07.665)
Okay, well welcome welcome Jacob I was thinking before One we've known each other for a while you brought up that you know There might be students in your the school That have interest in my family. We're not going to bring that up on the podcast. We'll talk about that at another date But I have now because of that interest been To the school of the College of st. Joseph the worker and I to be honest. I know
Dr. Jacob Imam (03:24.84)
Hehehehehe
Jason M. Craig (03:34.736)
Like I knew kind of new polity and I talked to Alex Wren and then I was visiting Steubenville and like you got to come see the college. And I was expecting like most Catholic startups. I thought you guys are going to be huddled in some like cubicles with a, you know, a couple of laptops in a gym or something. And instead you guys had purchased half of a dilapidated downtown and
I was invited to speak and it was the old courthouse that you had taken over. I talk about taking over a town. So I want to ask about you because you have an interesting background, but we've got to get to the College of St. Joseph the worker. So can you give me which just to skip ahead to keep people's interest here, if I'm already talking too much is a school that is both trade school and liberal arts, Catholic education for years, which is very intriguing to a lot of people, especially now.
But before that, you just can't not a lightning round man? I don't want to skip over, you know Your background and you can explain how you taught me the word Habibi. Hey BB and your your hit big give me the like Jacob a mom not a Catholic now I'm the president and founder or whatever your title is of the College of st. Joseph the worker and student
Dr. Jacob Imam (04:40.334)
You
Dr. Jacob Imam (04:51.81)
Yeah, sure. Well, my mom was from a family in Michigan, born there, born into a Catholic home. The family sadly apostatized when she was about 11 years old over Humanae Vitae, which is kind of funny because...
She was one of eight kids and I was like, that boy just keep going, man. You know, but it was not so much the teaching of the church. Obviously that wouldn't have triggered a change in lifestyle, but some of the confusion around the teaching that there were two different voices that seemed to be coming out. The Vatican saying one thing, the local priest saying another rocking the stability of the unified voice of the church that kind of.
Jason M. Craig (05:12.037)
Ha
Dr. Jacob Imam (05:33.118)
made my grandparents question what they were doing. So that was my mom growing up in Michigan and she traveled abroad one year for when she was studying in college.
over to Jerusalem where she ultimately met my dad and he was born and raised there, actually born in the old city walls of Jerusalem, and his family had been there as far as we can tell at least from the the 900s if not earlier. So it was an old, rooted, aristocratic Islamic family that was suffering obviously through the occupation and because his
arranged marriage had kind of fallen through at the last moment. He was free to choose the bride that he really wanted and it was a sweet white American girl that he chose. And so they they got married and after some time moved back to the States or for my dad just moved to the States.
my mom moved back to the States and there they worked in New York and Ohio and Michigan for some time before they settled in Seattle. I came along just a couple years before that and so that's where I was born and raised and raised in a home in which my dad had really become a lapsed Muslim.
still can adhere to the faith, would articulate it, but also chose a career, ultimately the study and engage in an occupation within finance where he was chose, not really compelled, but really chose to engage in an industry that in accordance to Islamic law was really haram, forbidden. And so that started to shift him into more of the American mindset, never really giving up the creedal
Jason M. Craig (07:25.699)
Hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (07:33.492)
formation of the faith, but rather the practice of it. Meanwhile, my mom was evangelized by the next-door neighbors and was brought back into a relationship with Christ, but in the Protestant world. And so I was raised really with this liberal Muslim father and this happy evangelical mother, both coming in and praying with me at night, and it didn't take me very long.
Jason M. Craig (08:00.4)
separately?
Dr. Jacob Imam (08:02.218)
Yeah, it didn't take me long to realize that my parents really believed something fundamentally different about the world and what we were here for. that was really, I mean, that was at the age of four. So it was pretty obvious, you know, if if four year olds realizing that.
Jason M. Craig (08:14.928)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (08:18.094)
In glory of the God, you know some years later and experience of my own sin my own sinfulness and turning to my dad's Faith I saw that Allah just said do better try harder but I was largely unconvinced that the character of Allah as recorded in the Quran was compelling that I That I thought that he was not truly long-suffering
that the world would still be here. They thought that we were so disobedient, I certainly first amongst them, amongst people, that there was no chance that He would actually wait around for us to reform. Whereas He looked over at my mother's faith rather than my father's and found that Christ was in fact and demonstrably long-suffering to the point of dying on the cross because we are sinners.
insofar as he did so, he demonstrated that there was also something substantial that needed to be done for our sin. And so I request to be baptized in a local Protestant church. And the Catholic said that it counted several years later when I converted.
Jason M. Craig (09:35.835)
Wow. You know what? I've only heard bits and pieces from other people. You've never given me that. So I'm glad to have heard.
Dr. Jacob Imam (09:44.472)
See friends just they stand side by side and look ahead together. They don't really turn around and look back. So it just shows that we're actually friends.
Jason M. Craig (09:48.451)
I know.
Yeah, I was with Chad Rosamond over the weekend as I was telling you before he didn't he works at the college with you he's a friend of mine that you stole from North Carolina and Gosh he said i'll think of it later. He said something so obscure I can't believe i've known you this long and you've never told me that that is that's that's that's great anyway Okay, so I know that I honestly I also learned a ton about you and your background from
Dr. Jacob Imam (10:08.558)
You
Jason M. Craig (10:19.973)
the New Yorker magazine article, which I got my hands on, which did a, I don't know how it's been digested there. And probably a lot of our listeners can't get it because it's behind a paywall and they're not, but an amazingly fair account of really the radical and different nature of this college of St. Joseph the worker. So a lot of our listeners might be familiar with new polity and new polity, especially thanks to
Dr. Jacob Imam (10:36.451)
Mm.
Jason M. Craig (10:49.681)
you know, Mark's cutting wit and your, you know, long work asking the question like, what is money? I mean, I remember I've never listened to podcasts ever. The only one I've gone through is like half of good money. And not because I didn't want to finish it, but it's just, I don't listen to podcasts. I know that I just don't.
Dr. Jacob Imam (11:01.326)
in.
Dr. Jacob Imam (11:10.51)
I'm with you. Yeah, someone that used to have a podcast. don't listen to podcasts, really either. It's just funny. Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (11:16.271)
I'm not opposed to them. And I tell all the I'm not opposed to them. It's just like I'm never going to start playing golf. I don't play golf. I'm not going to pick it up now. I've got my ways of getting, you know, intellectual stimulation. I'm just but I do like excuses to talk to my friends. So here we are on one anyway. But new polity, I think, really is instrumental in having a lot of people. Yeah, I don't know. Just rocking the boat, breaking the egg.
Dr. Jacob Imam (11:30.766)
Yeah, it's a good one.
Jason M. Craig (11:44.902)
when it comes to money that the way I don't that's not a thing the way Catholic men have been able to disassociate how we thought I would describe like this in America we think we've cracked the code that you can in fact serve mammon and God at the same time. I think new polity has has begged the question, you know a large I know that's not the only topic but it's a big one for a lot of men and then for a lot of fathers, you know our question we are we are economic.
Dr. Jacob Imam (12:01.696)
Mm.
Jason M. Craig (12:14.417)
beings. We have economic realities that we face as men and one of them is, you know, having our children economically stabilized, you know, that they're prepared to be able to take care of themselves and their family and do work. And we would all say that's dignified and good, but for most what that has meant in the last 50 years, a couple of generations has been success. It means success, which if you scratch the surface of that means, you know, a lot of money and a big fat retirement.
So you guys are, the College of St. Joseph the Worker was born out of new polity, because you guys were talking a lot about this kind of stuff. then, or this is my retelling of it. was really, that conversation got started and you really just spearheaded, we need something different. So describe to us why the College of St. Joseph the Worker, because I said at the beginning, it's both trade school and liberal arts. Like, what is it? What is the College of St. Joseph the Worker?
Dr. Jacob Imam (13:09.484)
Well, the College of St. Joseph's Worker is an institute of higher education that simultaneously trains students in the Catholic intellectual tradition to earn their bachelor's degrees, as well as in the skilled trades, carpentry, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, in order to earn a DOL, Department of Labor, certificate in those trades, getting them well on the way to their journeyman status.
and ultimately leading them to a life of mastery in the skilled trades. And thank God that in the skilled trades people get paid to train. So our students graduate with two certifications and no debt. And the reason why this institute exists is really because higher education has largely lost its way. That the education has slowly, through the years, become...
degraded to the point where it's now largely ideological and leading students to the most boring and the most insidious forms of conformity that one could imagine.
giving up on the task of the university, which is handing on the hard-earned wisdom of the past to both elevate the mind and clarify the intentions of the will so that we might truly love God and be better prepared and equipped to bring about the Kingdom.
here on earth by His grace. That's what the university's for. It's what it's always been for. Catholics were never shy about saying that. We cannot give up on higher education. We must reclaim it, and we must reclaim it in a way that is also practically
Dr. Jacob Imam (14:58.708)
enabling one to live a life of freedom and of friendship and that means that finances do play a part in it and instead of getting students up to their eyeballs in debt we must find a way that they are empowered monetarily to go out and be forces in the world. That's what we're trying to do.
Jason M. Craig (15:17.359)
Right. Okay. So before asking about, cause then, you know, you just gave the apologetic, which is beautiful on why the church and our, why we cherish education. How do you think just go back though? Cause I think for a lot of dads that are asking this question, how has college become, what did, what did you say flattened out and boring or what, was your word? Just, just, or, or, or conformists, you know, you, you you, you had some nice jabs in there. They're really good, but, not only
Dr. Jacob Imam (15:27.726)
Mm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (15:36.878)
Something... Sure.
You
Jason M. Craig (15:45.848)
Is there so I want the two questions, which is the return on investment Of college with the debt and the jobs you're going to get is it's people are questioning on an economic reality But it's it's so hard for them to question it And i'm thinking of parents and like just the whole trajectory of the lives of so many young people. It's just in one simple dependable Trajectory, which is get to college and on the other side of that is success
Dr. Jacob Imam (15:51.202)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (16:14.38)
Right. Right.
Jason M. Craig (16:14.841)
It sounds like your question. One, there's a lot of dads. I know they're questioning that economically. Can my kid really rack up this debt and get out on the other side and find a dignified work and be happy? But what do you mean that it has the college system has failed or higher education has failed in sort of just making us conforming to what boring, boring conformist of what do you mean? Tell me more about that.
Dr. Jacob Imam (16:41.324)
Absolutely. when you look at, there's a number of different ways of approaching this. I say this both as something that we can all witness, that there's great conformity that comes out of the university system. Everybody thinks the same way, acts the same way, searches for the same jobs, gives parroted responses without the ability to think deeply, penetrating into the principles and the precepts that really enable us to think.
in a dynamic and subtle way about various aspects of life. But really when you think about the... think that that's almost just something that we all recognize, we all see, in that the white female college graduate is like a stereotype today as a result, right? Of this onslaught of conformity. But I also think that if you're not giving somebody transcendent
then where else can they go but back down to earth? They just circle around the same ideas and the same concepts. It's transcendence, the union with God, the defined ideas that He gifts to us in prayer and in contemplation and only in those modes that actually brings us up and elevates us out of the mundane that we
currently dwell in. So metaphysically, it's just like a math equation. You don't have any choice except to do the same things over and over again. But of course, we all see it. We all recognize it. And we need to get out of it. And when you say, you mentioned just a moment ago, that parents just think about the practicality. And of course, you have to think practically. But if you're only thinking practically, then you're not thinking about how to sanctify.
world that we're in. You're rather just thinking about how to survive within it. And we Catholics have too high a calling to ask such boring questions as that. We have to take the charge that Christ gave us of joining Him in redeeming the world. I mean, it's just too much fun to miss out on as well.
Jason M. Craig (18:57.807)
Yeah, it's so, okay, now, all right, I wanna set that aside, because that's excellent, we need to discuss that. So ask everything you just said is a great defense of education in itself to give a transcendent vision that's necessary so that we're not just surviving or we're not boring. What did you say? White college girls in a hamster wheel or something.
Dr. Jacob Imam (19:10.286)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (19:23.065)
So why did the College of St. Joseph the Worker choose to have at its core the trades? Was it because, and this is probably not either or, but because it is an economically viable way you can get paid while you're at school or from a deep desire to recover or just recognizing the need for trade schools, which we hear a lot of people saying there's a need for trade schools, but there's trade schools out there, right? Why did it?
Yeah, you haven't even brought that up yet. So why that part of it?
Dr. Jacob Imam (19:56.758)
Yeah, great. This is something that's very dear to me. let me try and not overwhelm you too much with this. But let's start with this. The skilled trades, of course, do offer a financially viable path. But it is also something that we don't turn too much in our modern era because we think that it's lower. We think it's lesser. We think that those who work with their hands are the ones who just cannot work with their
This is actually not a new sentiment of the modern world. It's an extremely old sentiment of the pagan world. If you go back and you look at even the Babylonian period, you find that the gods created men because they themselves hated to work, to bear the drudgery and take on the load. So they made men so they didn't have to feed themselves anymore.
Jason M. Craig (20:46.097)
you
Dr. Jacob Imam (20:55.97)
water themselves or give themselves houses anymore. And that sentiment just spanned through not just that Babylonian period, but almost every pagan society that I know of. Look at the Greeks, where you find that Sparta and Thebes had laws on their books forbidding citizens from engaging in manual labor. Athens, at certain periods of their history, had similar laws, but even when one of the laws was
that law was not on the books, you still have Aristotle, perhaps Athens' most beloved son, writing in his treatise on politics that the life of a tradesman was ignoble and ignimical to the life of virtue. mean, holy smokes! Those are powerful sentiments that are not just this kind of visceral disdain of a
of a field, but a reasoned metaphysical claim that he came to. And the Romans more or less took this exact same idea as the Greeks disdaining the manual arts to the point where Cicero pretty much claims, makes it as the exact same thing as Aristotle in his treatise on duties where he says that the life of a
there's nothing respectable about a workshop within it. So the Greeks hated labor and the Romans hated labor and it was into this Greco-Roman world that the Word became flesh and spent most of the years of his life at a carpenter's bench. So Christ's life really does just set off political dynamite in the ancient world.
Jason M. Craig (22:25.541)
Hmm.
Jason M. Craig (22:44.411)
Specifically around that specifically around the fact that he was a carpenter
Dr. Jacob Imam (22:49.708)
That's right. And you actually have ancient pagans pointing out that Christianity could not possibly be true because the founder was a carpenter. That's how scandalizing it was to the ancient pagan mind. But of course, they lost. We won for a period. We're still winning. He won. We're participating in that victory. None of us get tired of winning in this situation though.
Ultimately, this life of Christ begins to define the life of the Christian. When St. Benedict, for instance, starts to define the mode of life for the monk in community, he does so based upon the three pillars of prayer, of study, and of work. His motto, or at Lebor, pray and work,
is not just saying that prayer is good and work enables it, but in prayer and also in work one has a true experience with the world's creator and redeemer. Some centuries later, when the universities are founded with a preparatory educational system in monasteries and in cathedral schools, the great educational theorists
actually brought in the manual arts as an intricate part of study necessary for people to go on to higher learning. And you can ask the question, why? is this so important? That Hugh of St. Victor and St. Bonaventure himself, the Seraphic doctor, said that the study of the manual arts and engagement in the manual arts as well was essential for somebody to be a great
a thinker and a real academic because nobody says that today. So why did they say it then? And their argument is very intricate and really wonderful but also gets simplified into something very obvious. It's that you can never think theoretically. You can never think well about something in a theoretical mode if you've never experienced it. That in the theoretical life, in the contemplative life, you are thinking about the form of an object, what it essentially is.
Jason M. Craig (24:50.16)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (25:12.926)
it substantially is. But how can you do that well if you never actually experienced it? If you're trying to think about a nature of a tree and you've never seen one because you're just inside playing video games all day, then how can you speculate about it? And it is sometimes funny to hear academics think about the wonder of a tree and they've never chopped one down before. My goodness gracious me. And what's also funny, and I love this actually,
Jason M. Craig (25:25.509)
Mm-hmm.
Jason M. Craig (25:35.174)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (25:41.078)
is that it's not just the contemplation of nature as nature, but actually the manipulation of nature is the first mode of learning. It's what both of those greats think are said as he was saying, Victor. We're just changing it. I think about a kid, think about a baby, you know, before he even thinks about anything, he breaks it, right? I mean, this is, you know, the babies are not contemplative creatures.
Jason M. Craig (25:53.435)
meaning making something.
Jason M. Craig (26:03.695)
Yeah. I, I, yes. You have young children. You have young children, young blaze. Well, if you name them something like blaze, they're going to, you know, break stuff doc. mean, that's.
Dr. Jacob Imam (26:10.318)
you
Yeah, that's right. And so this is the mode of a baby. You bite it, you take it, you manually engage with it before you realize what on earth is this thing that I'm holding, that I'm licking? What is this thing in my mouth right now? And that never ends. And you hear tradesmen saying things like, know, kids don't need to just learn about this in school. They need to work at it because you learn far more
Jason M. Craig (26:16.945)
Yes, I have a...
Dr. Jacob Imam (26:43.882)
working and thinking. And he's like, yeah, man, kind of. You're right. People need to engage in the work, actually engage in the labor before they start thinking about it. Otherwise, there's no content for which they can think about. in our modern age, we are so divorced from the world that how on earth can we even think theoretically about causes and effects?
effects if we've never experienced them, that the relations of the material world to one another is absolutely essential if you want to in an analogously proportional mode think about anything with precision in the higher mode of engagement. And so anyways, this also sounds like I'm instrumentalizing the trades because it's just an act along to the contemplative line.
But course, that then turns around. Then you have a chance of considering what you're doing in the trades. as St. Bonaventure again says, that the act of life precedes the contemplative and then is followed by it. That that drives us back into the active life that we might better manifest the Holy Trinity to the world and love our neighbor within it. And so this is just a glorious marriage of the active and the contemplative.
husband and wife that doesn't negate one another or make one feel worse or the other. As a man marries a woman, he becomes more masculine and she more feminine, more truly what they are. And this is why I find it so critical that we engage in the manual arts and the liberal arts simultaneously, that they both might be made more of what they truly are and the person who is engaged with them might truly become thus.
for human. So I love this and I just love the manual arts.
Jason M. Craig (28:45.445)
I can't tell, I can't tell Dr. Imam that you love this. Yeah, this has been for me, and I'm happy to hear you articulate very clearly that learning the manual arts is not like a stepping stone to the important things. Because in a certain way that betrays again the false dichotomy that people say well between the mind work and the.
Dr. Jacob Imam (29:10.648)
Yes.
Jason M. Craig (29:13.009)
or they'll say the carpenter is, know, no, like, no, I have an intellectual job. Like, have you ever like sat there with like real craftsmen that are carpenters? And is their mind just, I mean, like their mind is awake and especially and I grew up, you know, blue collar and and learned that I just work around working with my hands and the people around me that I knew that I respected, they worked with their hands. And it wasn't too much later that the intellectual tradition of the church.
grabbed hold of me after my conversion and The thing that I slowly came back to though and I this is getting to a question not just me money Monologuing is how these things need to keep going together that the life of a man in his house in his home that part of the the idea of like well, there's the intellect and there's the body and you know is that we now inhabit our world passively because we don't understand it now in the in the mode of fixing
Dr. Jacob Imam (29:45.806)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (29:58.733)
Hmm.
Jason M. Craig (30:11.523)
So when your kid breaks your stuff to be able to fix it, is to be active, right? So it actually makes you more of a man, because you're active, you're inhabiting, you have dominion in your domain when you know how to fix it. I know that seems fun, but I know that there's a, a massive detriment of, of security and formation and confidence and competence in men when they don't know how to do anything. So, but I do want to ask.
Dr. Jacob Imam (30:12.45)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (30:21.59)
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (30:30.711)
Yes.
Jason M. Craig (30:41.201)
That all sounds great. Have you had to deal with though? Because we have a, know, we had this apostle that we haven't done it in years, websites, to do it. St. Joseph's farm. We bring college students here and they just work on the farm. They just do work and they don't know that they don't know how to work. I can always reckon, you know, they talk about shovel ready jobs. Now you hand a kid who doesn't know how use a shovel, a shovel and it's embarrassing for everybody, right? They don't move any dirt and like they're hurt.
Dr. Jacob Imam (30:55.832)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (31:05.646)
you
Jason M. Craig (31:08.675)
or if they're holding a hammer halfway up, you know. So we actually have to go at the beginning of these things. We have to go through an entire like what is a tool, how to how to use a tool and not be one like how to extending your strength leverage like we to go through all that. And they did they these are very often there. Most of the students that we work with, they're they're from Florida. We've had some from from Boston. They don't know what they don't know, and they're shocked at their inability to use their body.
Dr. Jacob Imam (31:13.13)
man, yeah.
Jason M. Craig (31:37.394)
In the form of work and I always I always tell guys look the way you can recognize someone who doesn't know how to be on a job site is when he does anything sitting Indian style on the ground and he starts it's just I don't know why I don't know why it's like a really revealing thing when he sits down Indian style. It's like it's always the white kid. So With the students that have arrived how much They're probably accustomed to enjoying everything you just said about the intellect. What has it been like starting the school? I'm just guessing
Dr. Jacob Imam (31:38.037)
man, yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (31:51.054)
you
Jason M. Craig (32:07.473)
I'm just guessing that a lot of the students actually are arriving without the sort of grit that they might have in other settings already had when it comes to knowing how to labor, use their body work skill. What's that been like for the school? know, recalling John Senior who said it's easier to make a you can make a farmer to a college student in one semester. It takes a generation to make a college student into a farmer. You know, it takes a long time. So what's that been like trying to turn college students into laborers? Because that's what you've done. I you say in the working, how's that been?
Dr. Jacob Imam (32:09.229)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (32:29.1)
Yeah, my gosh. Well, I'm certain.
Dr. Jacob Imam (32:37.934)
Yeah, well, let me just comment on one thing that you said about the stereotype that the laborer is not intellectual. I just hired another carpenter to join our good rings here who has a PhD from Brown in biochemistry. So, mean, elite university, Ivy League University, PhD in a very, you know,
you know impressive field goes off becomes a professor he has his lab leaves and becomes a carpenter and when i asked him why in the interview he would do such a crazy thing he said he wanted a more intellectually stimulating career and and i think that you know some of the reason why our students that are coming here are as you say like they are engaged they are they are
Jason M. Craig (33:21.189)
Wow.
Dr. Jacob Imam (33:31.68)
enthralled by the intellectual life, but they also are enthralled by the manual arts as well. And of course, you know, they're applying, we're filtering guys through all that stuff. And so we're looking for those who want to say a true and genuine yes to the life of the mind and to the life of the hands as well. And so, but of course, you're not wrong that some of them are still figuring out how they use their body and why they do it, but their motivation is great and their virtue is
good and so they're picking things up fast and you know we have some you know kind paramilitary guys leading the ranks so they would just shave bark at them and it's fun exactly
Jason M. Craig (34:11.473)
Yeah, a little bit of a boot camp, a little bit of a I've always had, I say growing up blue collar, my father was his master plumber, he just plumbered most of my life, but my grandfather was a scientist and invented all sorts of things, actually, the little sock that goes around French drains, that's my granddad, and he's a chemist. Ed.
Dr. Jacob Imam (34:34.372)
well.
Jason M. Craig (34:36.667)
But you know what he and his sons did all the time in their spare time? They built houses. That's what he did. His mind needed it almost to continue to build houses. So I didn't think of that until you were just commenting. OK, so then you guys haven't recovered. So it happens to be that the trades are viable economic.
Dr. Jacob Imam (34:46.7)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (35:01.847)
Aspect but you you've chosen to embrace them because there's a need particularly Particularly today because you know, whatever however you want to disenchanted disembodied Whatever it is but or maybe I should ask you that how Yeah, how I'm looking at this intuitively a Catholic trade school is something so necessary and obvious right now But why is that like why now? Why is that more important now?
than in other times.
Dr. Jacob Imam (35:33.454)
Well, people obviously point to the demand being so high and the supply of tradesmen so low. And those are crazy numbers. A few years ago, when I started doing this marketing stuff for the college, I was throwing out the statistic that three journeymen were retiring for every one new apprentice entering it each year, which is like, those are bad numbers. And now I just saw another stat that it's five to one. So it's getting even worse. And we need to do something about that, obviously, as a nation.
you cannot sustain yourself, you can't actively build yourself. There's no stasis in the economic life just as there's not in the moral life. God built it so as they would pair and be modeled off of one another.
integrated with one another. But of course, I think some of these things will start to shift and everybody's talking about the AI scare and people losing jobs, which are very, very real, experiencing that currently. And everybody's saying go into the trades, go into the trades. But if you have all these people that are going into the trades, not because they're really choosing the trades, but because they're fleeing something else, then you're not going to find a class of people that can lead them.
as laborers and that's what we're trying to do at the College of St. Joseph the Worker. Taking those who are intellectually engaged and academically promising and giving them a context by which to put the full force of their minds at play and then I think it's just such an important one and it's already necessary even if these these population shifts were not happening it's necessary now.
Let me just give you a couple quick stats here. You know, we used to build houses that would last for hundreds of years, and now the average lifespan of a new conventional home is 50 years. Firefighters, who keeps better statistics on this than any other group, used to have 29 minutes to go into a legacy built house. That's with natural materials, etc.
Jason M. Craig (37:28.913)
Hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (37:42.558)
Now they have between three and seven minutes for arrival before a flash over event. That's where everything bursts into flames all at once. And that's purely because we're using worse materials that are now in place through poorer methods. And of course, these things, these are not just questions that are economic when you're talking about materials and methods. They're moral, right? mean, you talking about children being
in these homes, families are in the homes, the home is the place fundamentally where the next generation is cultivated and oriented to a path of virtue. And so the house must be fitting for that purpose. We have to start to think about these as family issues rather than just purely economic ones. And so this is also an exciting time to be able to
Jason M. Craig (38:35.462)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (38:39.138)
go back and learn the methods that we have cultivated through history and also bring in the new technological advances that we've made, that we've legitimately made, and marrying those together and figuring out what works and what doesn't. And that is a real exploration and that is a real task for something like, say, a college to be engaged in because it does demand real research.
I just got back last night from Austria where you have the best builders in the entire world. And I would just spend four days interviewing different craftsmen on their methods and their techniques. And it was just mind blowing. I mean, things that they're working on and they're trying out that really I've not met anybody in America doing. And if we want to be able to produce the best...
Jason M. Craig (39:25.209)
Hmm. Is that going to be something? Yeah, my my father, so he started out black sheep of the family because he didn't go to college, got into the trades and I spent my paint. My parents are divorced. I spent summers with him on job sites and and then he ended his career as the chief plumbing inspector for Durham County, North Carolina. And so well, we joked he went to the dark side and became inspector. You know, you grow up like.
Dr. Jacob Imam (39:46.286)
Thank you.
Jason M. Craig (39:52.924)
The inspector's coming and then you then you become one apparently And he commented I mean he he what he saw at the end like I remember him sweating pipe right like doing copper pipe and And and then now it's just like shark bites just jamming, know like the way they're making plumbing even like and he Says that one of the worst things that they did was actually in the code. Yeah I don't know if this is this is in North Carolina or if this is no, it's probably
Dr. Jacob Imam (39:55.31)
That's great.
Dr. Jacob Imam (40:06.157)
Yeah
Dr. Jacob Imam (40:13.752)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (40:22.705)
cross country that they basically dropped a sort of ambiguous but serious requirement the code called craftsmanship that there was just a there was a little bit of a an inspector could come in and go that's shoddy and like now it'd be probably be hard to enforce and probably be not worth the battle but what he said is you know from his from the beginning of plumbing to the end in the name in the attempt to
make everything these houses go up quick, easy, dummy proof. They're really erasing craftsmanship from the trades. So one of the answers that the industry, so to speak, is trying to answer the lack of trades is to make them almost obsolete where you can put up these temporary houses. But how do we, yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (41:02.136)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (41:16.916)
It's funny that use that phrase because my grandmother on my dad's side came and visited us once and she when she was driving, my dad's driving her through the neighborhood, she's looking at these all these stick frame homes going up and she turns to my dad and asks, honestly, why is it that you are building temporary homes? And she's just like, couldn't get it. know, that this was because, you know, our house in Jerusalem has 20 inch stone thick walls.
Jason M. Craig (41:37.68)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (41:45.445)
Yeah. Well, that's my first.
Dr. Jacob Imam (41:46.752)
It's just a completely different vision, but but but the plumbing example is an excellent one and you know one that
And it's just kind of embarrassing. mean, the shark bite example is just embarrassing in itself. the but think about all these like water bottle companies that are coming up and they're saying, you you should use metal water bottles. Otherwise, you're going to get microplastics. it's like, bro, I mean, that just came through pecs, you know, like the whole like the water came came through the whole county, which is on plastic, right? And it's like we have this this entire relationship with the
Jason M. Craig (42:11.119)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (42:22.448)
built world that is built on cheap shoddy work, know, the whole time. And I understand, economically, we've now situated ourselves in a position where we hardly can afford anything else. But that is also the task of the Christian, is how do we get the best for everyone? And that's something that I'm having great time exploring at the College of St. Joseph's in Worker.
Jason M. Craig (42:26.801)
Mm-hmm.
Jason M. Craig (42:42.821)
Yeah, I think that's well, I'm I want to follow up ask what you saw in Austria because I think the what's happening now is the loss of imagination. I we're plagued in the south. If you see land cleared, there's going to be crammed in there. These dumb little farmhouse, you know, black window, white board and bat. And like it's like the duplicates. If anyone out there just bought one of those houses, I'm sorry. It's just it's it'll it'll be good for about 40 years. But and they're temporary. And I have a friend who
Dr. Jacob Imam (43:10.894)
There's just an FYI, I live in a Menards kit home, so you know, nobody can have a worse home than me. not looking down. I gotta do something better for my family, yeah. Awesome.
Jason M. Craig (43:15.033)
Yeah!
Jason M. Craig (43:19.717)
Kit no, hey, I actually well Well, I grew up in a trailer and I loved it so Loved it manufactured. I mean if you're gonna have a manufactured home just have a manufactured home I mean at least it's movable when you're But I have a friend who works and this has come up a lot I mean there's a guy we interviewed the other day I thought he was gonna talk about self-defense. It turns out he restores wood windows and he was
Dr. Jacob Imam (43:33.262)
Alright.
Jason M. Craig (43:45.426)
talking about temporary. said it's a for him. It was a moral problem that our buildings are crappy. And I have a friend who works for a big construction company. He tells me he's like the way the industry of construction is thinking about buildings is absolutely temporary. mean, entire shopping centers, entire neighborhoods are understood the same way. Everyone's like, oh man, they made this thing so I can't fix it. So I have to build. So I have to buy another one. It's like they're doing that to homes and his
this guy, went to Spain and he just could not get over that it was like most of the homes could be a hundred years old. So I know and I know that's a complicated question and people might think that we're waxing romantic, but the college of St. Joseph's worker, I would argue is we at least have to start asking this question. Like what if you started thinking about your home is not an investment to flip, but as a, as a thing to build forever, you would, you would think and act and do differently, you know?
So what, back to the Austria thing, is there something that there, do they have, is this a worldwide phenomenon of our homes are temporary investments that hopefully we can flip before they fall down or burn up in a whatever you called it flash thing? yeah, flash over event, or yeah, what are some ways that you have thought about? How are we gonna start rethinking the construction, the building of our home and hopefully College St. Joseph's worker is leading in this?
Dr. Jacob Imam (44:59.192)
Pleasure, Vivian.
Dr. Jacob Imam (45:12.302)
Well, you know, practically, I'm happy to get into some of those ideas and techniques, sure, but really all comes down to what you just said. You know, are we thinking differently? You know, are our goals different? You know, what you desire is ultimately defines what you do. Right? And is it do you desire Christ? Do you desire your neighbor? Does the love of God come out to the point that gives you such love for those around you that you would
be there, that you would stay, that you would devote yourself, that you would die for the other, right? And if you're never leaving, then you're going to build better, right? You're going to invest more where you are, where you are the people that you love live, right? And if they're doing the same thing, then you are going to get a better built environment. I mean, that's just... but that is almost a secondary effect to the principal thing of loving Christ and fighting your vices and seeking His
Jason M. Craig (45:51.238)
Hmm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (46:11.952)
space, right? So that's really what the E-
Jason M. Craig (46:12.741)
Yeah, but the second thing you just brought up that's that's critical. Everything kind of falls apart and this I cannot believe how often and maybe this is just me that I always want to bring it back to this. But how often people like Wendell Berry are right that if we view our place as temporary in our acquaintances as optional and everything is sort of a stepping stone without roots, it seems impossible to build anything worth building. We actually have to have roots so that.
That's where like our homes become the biggest problem. And this is you met Craig DeFaro, the butcher across the street. That was when he moved there, he said, he said he started to. was the first time where he went into a home and his home he built in a metal warehouse because his part butcher shop, you know, we first started thinking about a home that where he's living somewhere where he'll never leave. Right. And I don't think we think about because we don't think about our homes that way, we don't build them that.
Dr. Jacob Imam (46:47.073)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (46:57.783)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (47:12.814)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (47:13.551)
Right, so just, so often our rootlessness leads to the possibility, right, of the just mass, I mean we could also blame, you know, just the industry I guess, but I think it's us, we're buying this crap, you know.
Dr. Jacob Imam (47:27.542)
Right, yeah, that's it. it. we, you know, and what else are you going to spend your money on, right? And it does mean that, and why is it that people who are making less money than us 120 years ago were building better houses? And there's a lot of different answers to that. But of course, one of them is that there was just less to spend money on, right? And the movement of trying to get people to stay in factories and work longer hours was, you know,
achieved ultimately through marketing, right? Giving people motivation to buy more stuff that they never really heard about, never really thought about. But that then drove them to try and make more money so they could acquire more stuff. Well, how do we have nicer homes, nicer built environments? Well, it's actually like going back to that old mindset and saying, what if I weren't marketed all this stuff? What if I wasn't buying all this extra stuff anymore? And I was really just focusing on the fundamentals that are really going in
help and aid my family. We would have a lot more money. Maybe still not enough because it is pretty, I mean, is cruel and wicked system that we're, economic system that we're living in right now. But boy, you know, we could do a lot better if we just began to think like those who'd, rather, if you began to think differently than those who built the economic system because those are really us. That's an important thing to know about.
Jason M. Craig (48:53.733)
Yeah, yeah, man, I hate when you point back to us. I wanna make it someone else. it's always me. Anything but the cross, Lord, come on, again. So how are you guys at the college? that, I mean, are you...
Dr. Jacob Imam (48:57.494)
Yeah. Hey, it's only Christian thing to do. It's like, you know, blame yourself.
Jason M. Craig (49:12.623)
Yeah, well, my wife, my wife wanted me to interview some college students. We got some of the from the from the college on the podcast. And she's super skeptical of colleges for the primary point that she's like, I don't believe them when they say localism matters, because unless they're. College college tends to be the gateway away right from from home, so then we're left never, never building anything, because the only way to have a culture and this is my argument that the sign of having a culture.
Dr. Jacob Imam (49:30.179)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (49:42.47)
Like people always say, I want a Catholic culture. Well, the sign of having a culture is that it passes on at least a generation. That's how it's kind of that it's something is there. But we get rid of every family is a diaspora of itself, and that's primarily through college. So how is how has that? Been articulated and received at the College of St. Joseph, word I'm just presuming that this has got to be a central part of the curriculum is as they think through their new skill set, it's not that they have endless potential, but now they have.
Dr. Jacob Imam (49:49.922)
you
Dr. Jacob Imam (49:56.653)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (50:11.271)
particularized potential that should be oriented towards a certain place.
Dr. Jacob Imam (50:16.564)
Right, absolutely. That's very right. Universities used to be, even in American history, the place where you would go away to then come back better. It's kind of like the telemicous moment of being able to go out of Ithaca to be able to come back as a man, and become back as a leader, is to come back that more fit in skill, more full in friendship, and more ready to lead. And so that's exactly what
we're hoping to do. And that's what we're, we've in a certain sense built into the very, not in a certain sense, something that we have actually built into the model. That summers are times when our students do go back home, that they start to get to know the scene around them and begin to serve it in a way that they weren't able and not capable of doing prior. So that when we graduate from here, we do send them back.
having helped them find a good place to work, a good master to work under, ultimately dedicated to the community that was once theirs and is now theirs in a new way that they are choosing, that they're pointing at and claiming as their own, perhaps in a way that they never did. This is essential, I think, to being able to sustain actually even our own model.
So think about it like this. This is not something that is accidental to our model. Is that if we train up all these tradesmen and then they all stay in student bill, then we would destroy the opportunities for the current cohorts to be actually working in town. We've actually made such a competitive market that we actually are no longer able to achieve that which we set out to do. So it's kind of fun. It's nice.
Jason M. Craig (52:13.454)
Yeah, send them home.
Dr. Jacob Imam (52:16.672)
dangled the knife right over our heads to keep us honest.
Jason M. Craig (52:18.769)
Well, I think one angle you should take with them, I think you should actually say you don't end this school debt free. I think what the going back to your community in the form of education, you have a debt that you owe the place that made you who you are, you know, up in the college might have brought something to some completion and maturity. But now I don't think we've instilled in children are.
Dr. Jacob Imam (52:29.726)
I like this take. I just hear you going.
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (52:46.691)
our super liberal fear of limiting their future has not allowed us to communicate the thing that's impregnated in the commandments and in the gospel that you owe the people that gave you life. You have to pay them back. And this, know this was a, especially in America, this was a sense, especially, you know, from our English heritage as well, that to your family and your household and your place, you owe, you need to pay that back once you become useful, right? So the moment you have some strength and ability,
Dr. Jacob Imam (53:01.314)
Right.
Jason M. Craig (53:15.905)
Now you because as a child you consumed as a man you can produce so before you can't just consume your whole life and then leave you need to come home and produce some for then that's how so so maybe communicating to the students that you're not debt free you actually owe your community that you return with these skills and this craft and and and build that up
Dr. Jacob Imam (53:25.804)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (53:35.104)
I like that take. That's great. That's great. St. Thomas Aquinas talks about the two forms of debt, one's legal and one's charitable, right? You know, insofar as you owe somebody a debt, you have to pay them back 10 bucks. The other one, there's no quantifiable way of capturing it. You know, is that your friends, you owe almost everything. You know, that's something that is real and demanding.
Jason M. Craig (53:56.699)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (54:00.433)
Well, I'll just we can end. know you need to go. We'll end with I was thinking about Chad's building that collapsed in Steubenville. Which I won't tell the whole story, but a mutual friend of ours had a building that was in between two Catholic owned businesses, the grocery box and was it the book and bookmarks a bookstore and this this building collapsed that that Chad bought poor guy and.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:07.214)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:17.486)
Yep.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:21.698)
That's right. That's right.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:27.979)
Thank
Jason M. Craig (54:28.785)
But before it collapsed, he and another guy, think it was Adam or one of the other guys I met had gone in there and kind of shirred up one of the corners. And my understanding is that had they not done that, that the collapse could have taken out the other buildings as well. And it just occurred to me when I got, was thinking about it last night that these guys, they don't owe Chad anything, right? If these were like neighbors you didn't know, they wouldn't owe, they don't owe him anything legally. Like, hey man, I'm sorry your building fell down.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:50.51)
Mm.
Dr. Jacob Imam (54:56.312)
Yeah.
Jason M. Craig (54:57.381)
But now that they have the knowledge, know, Mark and John have the knowledge on both sides of him that this guy might have accidentally saved our building. And we can of course see the providence in that. And we kind of probably owe him in some weird way, the way you just mentioned charitable that those are the kind of things that occur only with this sort of skill set and vision of the world. So I saw it firsthand. I'm just going to tell you that story to verify the ideas of the college seem to be working out.
Dr. Jacob Imam (55:24.982)
love it. Thank you.
Jason M. Craig (55:26.875)
Y'all please, please help Chad dig out of that rubble. on. Jacob, any, any closing advice for you?
Dr. Jacob Imam (55:32.75)
He is such a good man. The smile never left his face. It's incredible.
Jason M. Craig (55:36.291)
It's too good. It's annoying. I can't. I can't stay with him for too long. I can't. It's just he's just too good. I can't. I just it just grates on my sin. That's he was really it was so good. I actually I think our our young children, they're they're like five and six though, the girl and a boy. I think we've now arranged their marriage. So we got a little Islamic influence from you, maybe.
Dr. Jacob Imam (55:56.46)
Ha ha ha.
Thanks.
Jason M. Craig (56:00.293)
Do you have any, I'd like you to close us off with some advice for maybe fathers and young men that have been interested in your school. What kind of students are you looking for? How can we get ready?
Dr. Jacob Imam (56:10.161)
We want students that are completely committed to the intellectual life and completely committed to the manual life, both as modes to love God and love neighbor, right? I mean, that's why we're doing this. For too long, you know, we have thought about the next phase is preparing ourselves to be able to do well, whatever that means. No, we want people to come to train.
were and die for Saint Joseph. I that's the type of kid that we want. know that's the one that that wants to be raised up into a life of virtue and knowing that that the mind is is living and active through the hands. That's the kid that we want. So if you're if you're finding yourself great in the classroom
desiring for a way in which the good might be manifested in your your world. Come look at the College of St. Joseph's and the Worker.
Jason M. Craig (57:12.625)
Beautiful. Last question. How's my milk cow?
Dr. Jacob Imam (57:16.11)
She gave 26 pounds this morning. Now my days are Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Monday afternoon.
Jason M. Craig (57:19.011)
Alright, did you do it?
Jason M. Craig (57:26.307)
All right. All right. If you weren't impressed, you are now listeners of Sword and Spade podcast. Jacob Mom is also sometimes milking a cow that used to live on my farm. Jacob, thanks for being on the Sword and Spade podcast. I appreciate your time and I'll be praying for your school. Don't forget to pray for me.
Dr. Jacob Imam (57:34.977)
Yeah.
God bless you, my friend.
Jason M. Craig (57:42.556)
Hey, baby.