In this episode of Humanize, Wesley has a wide-ranging a conversation with his close friend Joseph Bottum, one of our most well read and original thinkers, a true intellectual in the best sense of that term. Their conversation ranges from the new field of cyber-ethics, to poetry, to the importance of cemeteries in maintaining human community, to how the laughter of a little girl he never met changed the course of Bottum’s life. Bottum is one of the nation’s most widely ranging thinkers, with hundreds of essays, reviews, poems, and short stories in publications from the Atlantic to the Washington Post. He is the former Books AND Arts Editor for the Weekly Standard and Editor of the religious journal, First Things. He is the author of the sociological study, An Anxious Age, and more recently, The Decline of the Novel. He is also a Christopher Award-winning writer of children’s verse. His popular writing ranges from obituaries in The Times of London to political essays in our leading journals, to a #1-bestselling sports essays in Amazon’s Kindle singles series, and numerous short stories. He is also a music lyricist, whose work has been performed by singers from Nashville to Carnegie hall. A native of south Dakota, Bottum holds a B.A. from Georgetown and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College. He is an associate professor at Dakota State University, and currently directs the Classics Institute, a think tank at Dakota state university for the study of cyber-ethics, that views the computer revolution as an advance in civilization, while being cognizant of its effects. And if that’s not enough, Bottum is also the poetry editor for the NY Sun. Here are the links: CLASSICS Institute – Dakota State University (dsu.edu) The Immorality of Bad Software Design | Washington Examiner “The Morning Watch,” by Joseph Bottum – Mockingbird (mbird.com) The Pig-Man Cometh | Washington Examiner An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America – Kindle edition by Bottum, Joseph. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. The Decline of the Novel: Bottum, Joseph: 9781587311987: Books (amazon.com)