The Habit

In this replay of an episode from 2022, Jonathan Rogers talks with Justin Whitmel Earley about the formation of better habits. Justin is the author of The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction , among other books. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Garrett Taylor is the art director for the Wingfeather Saga television series. The new Art of Wingfeather book features beautiful work from Garrett and his teams. In this episode, Garrett and Jonathan Rogers discuss "truth of materials" and why the Wingfeather team chose not to use CGI to make their visual world as realistic as possible. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/membe...

In 2016, Kevan Chandler and a few of his friends took a trip across Europe. Kevan’s friends carried him—literally. Kevan has spinal muscular atrophy, type 2, a disease that renders him unable to walk. But he left his wheelchair behind, and his friends carried him in a specially designed backpack, giving him access to many more places than a wheelchair could go. Kevan has told the story of that rem...

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and the writer of several books. Until recently she had a column in the New York Times . She has also had a column in Christianity Today . Her new book is Advent: The Season of Hope . It’s part of the Fullness of Time series–books about each season of the liturgical calendar, edited by Esau McCaulley. In this episode, Tish and Jonathan Rogers talk about w...

Mitali Perkins has always thought of herself as an outsider writing for outsiders. And yet she has a remarkable gift for inviting people in. She has two new books out: Hope in the Valley is a middle-grade novel. Holy Night and Little Star is a picture book for Christmas. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Illustrator Joe Sutphin has been a fixture around the Rabbit Room for many years. Highlights of his long career include illustrating The Wingfeather Saga and Little Pilgrim’s Progress . His newest book, however, is his most ambitious yet. It’s an almost 400-page graphic novel version of Richard Adams’s classic Watership Down . Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnys...

Amber and Seth Haines have each written and published books of their own, but now this married couple have written a book together— The Deep Down Things: Practices for Growing Hope in Times of Despair . In this episode, Amber and Seth Haines talk with Jonathan Rogers about Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing in partnership, marriage, and recognition, among other things. Support the show: https://therab...

Andrew Wilson is Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London, and has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD). He is a columnist for Christianity Today , and has written several books. The most recent is Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West . Historian Mark Noll wrote, “Andrew Wilson’s book is extraordinary in every way: extraordinary...

Amy Baik Lee has written that in every place her life has taken her, "there have been hints of beauty and great knocks of mercy that have called to me from beyond my surroundings, always speaking of a King and Friend and Father whose presence is truly Home.” That sense of longing, those clues that maybe we were made for a different world, make their way out in every thing Amy writes, and especiall...

In 2001, Henry Louis Gates announced the discovery of an unpublished novel called The Bondswoman’s Narrative, written in the 1850s by an enslaved woman named Hannah Crafts. If Gates had the authorship right, it would be the oldest known novel by an African-American woman. But many people doubted the book’s authorship. In 2013, however, Gregg Hecimovich produced evidence that The Bondswoman’s Narra...

Dr. Tiffany Eberle Kriner is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. She is also a farmer. Her new collection of essays is In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm . In it, Dr. Kriner connects culture, ecology, faith, and literature, and invites readers to cultivate fruitful conversations between literature and the environments in which they live. Support t...

Emma Fox is the author of The Carver and the Queen , an historical fantasy novel based on the folklore of Siberia. In this episode, Emma talks with Jonathan Rogers about piano lessons, teaching and mentoring young writers, and how she got interested in Slavic folklore.  Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Philip Yancey has written and published more than 25 books. He is known for his honesty, his willingness to wade into difficult questions–and, more to the point, his unwillingness to give easy answers to those difficult questions. In his latest book, published by Rabbit Room Press, Philip Yancey engages the seventeenth-century poet and preacher, John Donne. Undone is Philip Yancey’s modern renderi...

Diana Glyer teaches in the honors college at Azusa Pacific University. Her writing and research focus on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings. Her most recent book is The Major and the Missionary . Dr. Glyer edited this collection of letters between Warren Lewis, the brother of C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a medical missionary in Papua New Guinea. Their conversation spans faith...

Carolyn Leiloglou’s new middle-grade novel is Beneath the Swirling Sky: Book 1 of the Restorationists Trilogy . It’s a book about art, creativity, and reclaiming the creative energy that comes so naturally to small children. It’s also about a family of people who can go into old paintings and walk around in them. Like her main character Vincent, Carolyn is the granddaughter of art collectors and t...

Dr. Jennifer L. Holberg is professor and chair of the English department at Calvin University and codirector of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing , the home of the Festival of Faith and Writing, which will be happening live and in person next April, for the first time since 2018. Her new book is Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith . In this episode, Dr. Holberg and J...

Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, a speaker, and the author of several books–most recently, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope . In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to be hospitable to your own suffering, engaging suffering as the way of redemption, and the role of storytelling in mental and spiritual health. Support the show: https://therabbitroom...

Harrison Scott Key's new memoir is How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. It’s the story of how infidelity tore his marriage apart, and how he and his wife Lauren patched it back together. It is hilarious, and it’s wise, and it’s exceedingly hopeful. To quote the jacket copy, “How to stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress t...

In this, the final episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership tell stories about NEW hometowns. Hometowns change, and for a little while, at least, you can find yourself a stranger in your own hometown.  Loren Warnemuende: Michigan  Rachel Donahue: Spain Desi Ana Sartini: Southeast Asia Holly Schurter: Illinois Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfue...

Karen Swallow Prior is one of the leading evangelical writers and commentators our time. Her new book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis . In this episode, Dr. Prior and I talk about the role of imagination in the making of meaning, and we talk about what happens when we start to examine the unexamined metaphors that make it possible for u...

In this, the sixth episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership take us to all four points of the compass. Sara Dredge takes us north to Ontario, Canada. Sarah Bannerman, Lindsay Kyle, and  Monica Olsen take us south to Mississippi and Louisiana. Laura Love goes east to China. And Shannon Stephens takes us west–or, in any case, to the West Virginia of his childh...

Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today. His new book is Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America . He invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step into an uncertain future, letting go of the kind of culture-warring, politicized Christianity that has led us to this moment of reckoning. In Losing Our Religion , Dr. Moore shows how we might steer clear of both...

Summer Short’s new book is The Legend of Greyhallow . Kirkus Reviews called it “A delightful, engaging otherworldly adventure sure to charm. This fun read artfully combines our reality with Greyhallow's...fans of The Lord of the Rings and portal fantasies will find much to enjoy.” Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s episode, the fifth in the Hometown Stories series, takes us to Texas. We’ll blow up a gas station in the Panhandle. We’ll check out some tumbleweeds in West Texas. We’ll pop over to Bryan Texas, to wonder how and why Bryan made somebody’s best-of list, and why a big-city reporter would want to deny them their moment of glory. And finally, we’ll go squirrel hunting in tiny Bluff Dale Te...

In honor of the Fourth of July, this episode of The Habit Podcast continues the Hometown Stories summer series with five reminiscences of small-town America by writers from The Habit Membership. Prepare for a gauzy, nostalgic look at the kind of Americana that makes you want to eat watermelon and listen to music by John Philip Sousza. Expect parades, fireworks, corn on the cob, pioneers on the Wes...