What kind of person is formed by songs, stories, gardens, books, and the patient work of making? This episode is a living picture of classical education beyond the classroom. In this conversation, Brian Williams speaks with singer-songwriter, author, and Rabbit Room founder Andrew Peterson about how truth, goodness, and beauty are carried through embodied practices: reading aloud, making music, gathering around tables, learning from creation, and practicing a craft over time. Andrew invites parents, educators, and ordinary makers to recover the courage to begin badly, the discipline to keep going, and the joy of telling the truth as beautifully as we can.

Together, Brian and Andrew explore the Rabbit Room as a “wayside inn” for artists and readers, the formative power of handmade work, the goodness of amateur creativity rooted in love, and the danger of bypassing craft. This conversation offers a hopeful vision for homes, schools, and communities where beauty is not an extra, but part of how children and adults become fully human.

About the Guest
Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room. Andrew has released more than ten records over the past twenty years, earning him a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wing feather Saga, which have sold more than a million copies, along with his creative memoirs, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden. He’s also an executive producer of the Wing feather Saga Animated Series, which is currently in production on its third season with Angel Studios. In 2008 Andrew founded the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee that nourishes Christ-centered communities by cultivating and curating stories, art, and music.

Guest Links
Andrew Peterson | https://www.andrew-peterson.com/
The Rabbit Room | https://www.rabbitroom.com/
The Wingfeather Saga | https://www.wingfeathersaga.com/
Adorning the Dark | https://www.bhpublishinggroup.com/product/adorning-the-dark-2/adorning-the-dark-2/
The God of the Garden | https://www.bhpublishinggroup.com/product/the-god-of-the-garden-2/

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What happens when young adults have been taught how to achieve, but not how to work, love, and rest like whole persons? In this episode of Forged, Dr. Brian Williams speaks with Dr. Anna Bonta Moreland about The Young Adult Playbook and the ordinary habits that help men and women build lives of purpose. Their conversation moves from Argentine family dinners and a different relationship to time, to the loneliness and risk-aversion many young adults feel around dating, vocation, and leisure. Along the way, Dr. Moreland offers a hopeful vision for recovering agency through embodied friendship, honest conversation, good work, Sabbath-shaped leisure, prayer, and practical courage.

This is a conversation for young adults, parents, teachers, and anyone who senses that achievement alone cannot form a life. Dr. Moreland helps name the fear many students carry into adulthood, then points toward a better way: not escape from responsibility, but a deeper education in how to live.

About the Guest
Dr. Anna Bonta Moreland is the Anne Quinn Welsh Endowed Chair and Director of the University Honors Program at Villanova University. A full professor in the Department of Humanities, her academic expertise and research include medieval theology, interfaith dialogue, and comparative theology. She is the author of Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God (Crossroad/Herder, 2010), Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), and The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters (CUA Press, 2024). She has received grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Lilly Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She received her B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston College under the direction of Michael J. Buckley, S.J.

Guest Links
Anna Moreland | https://dspt.edu/anna-moreland
The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like It Matters | https://www.amazon.com/Young-Adult-Playbook-Living-Matters/dp/0813239206

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What does it take to form a life with roots, discipline, and courage in an age of distraction and drift? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams talks with R. R. Reno about the ordinary practices that shape the soul: family dinners, church, books, marriage, friendship, cooking, architecture, and the demanding craft of rock climbing. Reno reflects on growing up in Baltimore, learning endurance in Yosemite, finding stability in marriage and worship, and pursuing excellence as a teacher, writer, and Christian. Along the way, he considers why beauty trains our affections, why embodied disciplines matter, and what it means to “do battle without hatred.”

The conversation moves from childhood rhythms and the gift of rootedness to the spiritual trial of physical risk, the public nature of architecture, and the vocation of First Things as a guide for readers seeking clarity in a fractured cultural moment.

About the Guest
R. R. Reno has served as Editor of First Things since 2011. He received his PhD in
theology from Yale University, and taught theology and ethics at Creighton
University in Omaha, Nebraska for twenty years. He has published in many
academic journals, magazines, and newspapers. His most recent books include The
End of Interpretation, Return of the Strong Gods, and Resurrecting the Idea of a
Christian Society.

Guest Links
First Things | https://www.firstthings.com

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