Christopher J. Lisanti - Podcast Details

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Roots of FlourishingA Biblical Understanding of FlourishingThis episode looks at a Biblical view of flourishing through the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-5: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."The understanding of the heart according to Professor Scott Redd "refers to the general cognitive and volitional capacities of the person.” In other words, our thoughts, emotions, and desires or the psychologic aspect of our humanity. The challenge is to recognize that our thoughts, emotions, and desires can be self-serving and frequently counte...2025-05-1523 min

Roots of FlourishingIdentities Part 5: The Ultimate Identity ... in ChristThis last of a five-part series on identity analyzes an identity in Christ. This identity answers the three fundamental questions: who is my God (spiritual dimension), who is my neighbor (social) and who am I (psychologic dimension). God is the trinitarian God proclaimed and embodied in Jesus Christ. Our primary duties and obligations lie in the first two questions through the two greatest commandments … love of God and love of neighbor. These loving relationships then answer the question of who I am with the answer that I am a child of God and an apprentice or disciple of Jesus. An...2025-02-2824 min

Roots of FlourishingIdentities Part 4: VictimhoodCritical theory is a way of looking at humanity through power imbalances that may have harmed a person’s human flourishing as currently defined by economic and/or sexual expression. Critical theory's Achilles heel is that it is unclear about the future institutions and values that the revolution is aiming towards. Thus, there is a faith in revolution for revolution sake.Power imbalances were initially defined as economic ones between bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Critical race theory built upon these economic disparities through racial lines. Lastly, power was interpreted not only economically but in any po...2025-01-0530 min

Roots of FlourishingIdentities Part 3: Three IdentitiesThis is the 3rd of a five-part series on identity. We analyze the identities of a Mandalorian (Star Wars series), a physician, and a member of the profession of arms. We analyzed all three identities through our 5 questions. All three identities were or are being challenged. The first two (Mandalorian and physician) are challenged from within as to what are the core elements or what really defines the identity. The challenge to the profession of arms is different as other identities rise up against the warrior identity for priority. The Mandalorian resolved the tensions by adhering to a deep...2024-11-0130 min

Roots of FlourishingIdentities Part 2: Current TrendsThis is the 2nd of a five-part series on identity. We review our current identity trends by answering our 5 questions that help us answer how good an identity is. Our identities are currently psychologically driven. Within the psychologic dimension, our desires drive our identity while our emotions act as gatekeepers deciding whether another person’s words will be allowable or not. Our rational thought has a much lower priority. Here are our 5 questions and insights regarding our current trends. 1. How much is based on truth? Current alternative truth claims regarding gender are having poor outcomes while denying...2024-10-1027 min

Roots of FlourishingIdentities Part 1: Fundamental QuestionsThis is the first of a five-part series on identity. It is useful to examine identities throughout history and up to our modern day by asking one or more of three fundamental questions. Who is my God (spiritual dimension), who is my neighbor (social) and/or who am I (psychologic dimension).Historically up to the Enlightenment, a person’s identity was based upon the answers to the first two questions: who my God is and who my neighbor is. Duties and obligations then flowed from the answers to those two questions. After the Enlightenment in the West, the que...2024-09-0724 min

Roots of FlourishingErrors of the Spiritual DimensionThis episode concludes our examination of the spiritual dimension by analyzing common errors. Error #1: Mistaking the social for the spiritual. We think the religious service with its liturgy and building or obedience to social norms are the spiritual dimension. Religious service attendance and doing the good and avoiding the evil should be encouraged. However, to be complete, it needs to work towards the transcendent good, true, and beautiful along with a relationship with God in the spiritual dimension. We need to live multi-dimensionally. Error #2: An incomplete understanding of the spiritual. Focusing inordinately on transcendent truths can ruin...2024-03-2229 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Spiritual Dimension: Part 2Second episode of two parts on the spiritual dimension. Humans appear designed to pursue knowledge and particularly knowledge of the sacred or transcendent. Defining the spiritual dimension as things that are transcendently good, true, and beautiful, and God Himself is robust for four reasons: 1) it distinguishes the spiritual dimensions from the other three dimensions, 2) these four areas all work harmoniously together, 3) it distinguishes humans from the rest of creation, and 4) it reflects the nature and character of God.The spiritual dimension consists of things that are transcendently good, true, and beautiful, and ultimately God Himself. All these area...2024-02-2316 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Spiritual Dimension: Part 1First episode of two parts on the spiritual dimension. Humans appear designed to pursue knowledge and particularly knowledge of the sacred or transcendent. Defining the spiritual dimension as things that are transcendently good, true, and beautiful, and God Himself is robust for four reasons: 1) it distinguishes the spiritual dimensions from the other three dimensions, 2) these four areas all work harmoniously together, 3) it distinguishes humans from the rest of creation, and 4) it reflects the nature and character of God. The spiritual dimension consists of things that are transcendently good, true, and beautiful, and ultimately God Himself. All t...2024-02-0223 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 5--The SpiritualThis is the final lectures on the challenges of the digital revolution on our humanity where we discuss its impact on the spiritual dimension.All aspects of the spiritual dimension can be harmed by the digital revolution. The spiritual dimension includes the Good (the virtues), the True and the Beautiful while culminating in our relationship with God who is ultimately the summation of everything that is Good, True and Beautiful. The Good: as we saw in the prior episode, it promotes vices such as anger and pride while inhibiting the virtues through lack of in per...2024-01-0523 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 4--The Social Lecture 2This is the second of two lectures on the social harms by the digital revolution. In the pre-digital world, we desired and sought out relations with those that we had common beliefs and interests; however, the degree of homogeneity of those beliefs and interests was limited by the potential number of people we could interact with. We also had access to limited information which prevented many of our beliefs from going very deep. The breadth of values that we held to be vital was also limited due to lack of reinforcement and/or exposure by those in the...2023-12-0136 min

The Locher RoomAuthor Tom Lisanti: Ryan's Hope - An Oral History of Daytime's Groundbreaking Soap - The Locher RoomDon’t miss an Author’s Afternoon with Tom Lisanti in The Locher Room. Tom stopped by to talk about his new book, Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap.The book is out now and is a definitive look at the popular serial from the people who made it so beloved and how it made its way into millions of households through a combination of compelling storylines, incredible publicity, a slew of younger viewers who became loyal fans, and daytime star power that made it so innovative during the Golden Age of Daytime Soap Ope...2023-11-161h 03

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 4--The Social Lecture 1This is the first of two lectures on the social harms by the digital revolution. The digital world has led to two main features: we ignore the people in front of us and bully those we don’t see. We will address the first of these two: ignoring the people in front of us and the harms it has on the basic goods of friendship and marriage. We are either distracted or addicted to our digital world because of the unnatural immediacy and quantity of novel information and/or emotional rewards it provides. Real in-person relationships always develop more...2023-11-1023 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 3--The Biologic Lecture 23rd part on the digital revolution looking at biologic harms. Key brain aspects include networks, the neurotransmitter dopamine, and mirror neurons. 4 networks. 1) executive control network (ECN): decision making and self-regulation. 2) salience network (SN): filters external and internal stimuli. 3) default mode network (DMN): activated when not engaged in a task. Includes ideas of the self and others (aka social cognition or mentalizing). 4) task positive network: active in tasks.Neurotransmitters help neurons communicate. The neurotransmitter dopamine drives reward centers. Mirror neurons (MN) fire when a person acts or observes someone performing the same act and are important in perceptions...2023-08-2523 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 3--The Biologic Lecture 13rd part on the digital revolution looking at biologic harms. Key brain aspects include networks, the neurotransmitter dopamine, and mirror neurons. 4 networks. 1) executive control network (ECN): decision making and self-regulation. 2) salience network (SN): filters external and internal stimuli. 3) default mode network (DMN): activated when not engaged in a task. Includes ideas of the self and others (aka social cognition or mentalizing). 4) task positive network: active in tasks.Neurotransmitters help neurons communicate. The neurotransmitter dopamine drives reward centers. Mirror neurons (MN) fire when a person acts or observes someone performing the same act and are important in perceptions...2023-08-1122 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 2--The Psychologic2nd of 5-part series on the digital revolution. Today we look at the psychologic harms.Expressive individualism sets the background that already drives us more into the psychologic. This overemphasis on our thoughts, emotions, and desires leads to narcissism. This preoccupation with self-referential thinking or thinking about “me” leads to unhappiness.Silicon Valley exploits this turn to the psychologic by exploiting our mechanisms for producing positive emotions. Their techniques take advantage of an unnatural environment overwhelming our neurobiology resulting in boredom and anxiety over “fear of missing out” on the next positive emotion served up by digital...2023-06-1633 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 1--FrameworkThis is the first part of a five-episode series on the challenges that the digital revolution pose for our humanity. This episode will provide a general framework to analyze the effects of tools and specifically the digital revolution regarding our human flourishing. The analysis begins with assessing the depth and breadth of a tool’s impact on us. The digital revolution is widespread globally while at the same time we now spend a substantial portion of our lives interacting with it. Additionally, the technology now vies for our attention through a myriad of alerts and other...2023-06-0213 min

Roots of FlourishingConversation with Micah Allen - Part 2Join me in the last of a two-part conversation with college student Micah Allen. This episode continues our discussion of human flourishing from both philosophical and theological perspectives. We introduce three philosophers and theologians Soren Kierkegaard, Marcus Aurelius, and R.C. Sproul in addition to referencing previously mentioned authors Viktor Frankl and Albert Wolters. The conversation focuses on redeeming a proper understanding of the individual and also of an ascetic life. We also discuss the role of suffering in our lives and how that can lead to post-traumatic growth and a furtherance of our virtues and character....2023-04-1428 min

Roots of FlourishingConversation with Micah Allen - Part 1Join me in the first of a two-part conversation with college student Micah Allen as we discuss human flourishing in the college experience and beyond. This wide ranging discussion covers issues within college from Micah's perspective as a resident assistance to general thinking of human flourishing from both theological and philosophical perspectives. E-mail for comments and questions at: Rootsofflourishing@gmail.com 2023-03-2430 min

Roots of FlourishingRedeeming Work: The Institution—Part 2The last of a four-episode series on redeeming work that discusses how ideological intrusion into our work can degrade, dilute, and even distort the good of our work. Finally, we discuss the one area of positive enhancement (promoting engagement or flow) that the institution contributes to our work. Ideology can be defined as a set of political beliefs or a set of ideas that characterize a particular culture. Although ideology can degrade and dilute the good of work, its greatest threat is in distorting it by turning the specific work into something else to pursue ano...2023-02-1729 min

Roots of FlourishingRedeeming Work: The Institution—Part 1The third of a four-episode series on redeeming work that introduces three areas of harm (money, bureaucracy, and ideology) and one area of positive enhancement (promoting engagement or flow) that the institution contributes to our work. The three harms degrade, dilute, and/or distort our work. The disordered love or prioritization of money can either be from an individual or institutional perspective. Paid work or employment is not a necessary condition of achieving the good of work; however, since we all need money this is the most common avenue and unfortunately is a source of pro...2023-02-0329 min

Roots of FlourishingRedeeming Work: The Individual-Part 2The second of a four-episode series on redeeming work discusses the importance of loving people we work with and for while highlighting the fundamental key of the spiritual dimension. The social aspect of our jobs is arguably the most important as it leads directly to more of the fruits of flourishing (three--meaning, positive relationships, and positive emotions) than loving our jobs for their own sake does (a single fruit--accomplishment). The impact that our work has on people is increasingly indirect due to the digital world, and thus we need to become more mindful and seek to...2023-01-2018 min

Roots of FlourishingRedeeming Work: The Individual-Part 1This is the first of a four-episode series on redeeming work. The basic thesis is that we can redeem work only if we love the work we do for its own sake AND love those associated with our work—those we work with and work for. The first two episodes will focus on the individual while the last two will address the contributions that the institution plays. Overall human flourishing both in and outside of work is a necessary precondition to redeeming work. Living a balanced, multidimensional harmonious life oriented to the basic goods is essent...2023-01-0721 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Fruits of Positive PsychologyThis episode we review the contributions of positive psychology to human flourishing by summarizing and analyzing Dr. Martin Seligman’s book “Flourish.” Positive psychology’s current contributions to understanding flourishing can be quickly summarized with the acronym PERMA (P: Positive emotions; E: Engagement or flow; R: Relationships—positive ones; M: Meaning outside oneself; A: Accomplishment for its own sake). One needs to have a combination or balance of all these to achieve human flourishing. The root of self-transcendence directly leads to Engagement, Meaning, and Accomplishment while self-transcendence is a key factor in achieving positive relationships. Additionally...2022-12-0928 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of Mutual SubordinationWe discuss the last criteria of how we can rightly order our four dimensions and promote the basic goods through the concept of mutual subordination. Mutual subordination is akin to self-transcendence but takes this notion out of the psychologic and rightly applies it to all dimensions and all the basic goods. No dimension or basic good can bring about its own end but is entirely dependent upon the other dimensions to bring about their end. We review all four dimensions beginning with health where our biologic health is entirely dependent upon the other three dimensions to brin...2022-11-1824 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of The Basic GoodsThis episode defines and lists the basic goods associated with each dimension which we should never harm and generally work towards promoting. Basic goods are goods or ends that should not be instrumental to another good. In other words, these should not be used to serve other ends. A list of basic goods includes life, health, knowledge, work, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, marriage, personal integrity, and harmony with the divine. The biologic dimension includes life and health while friendship, marriage, work, and play reside in the social dimension. Harmony with the divine is solely in the spiritual dimen...2022-11-0423 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of HarmonyThis episode reviews the importance of harmony to our human flourishing. Harmony reinforces the notion that all the dimensions should not harm any other dimension but also that all the dimensions should work … together. The effects of multi-dimensional living incorporating three or even four of our dimensions into all our activities result in full integration, human flourishing, and completion of our humanity. Harms to a dimension result in dis-integration and a lack of flourishing. Moral injury is an example where a harm to a virtue usually justice can result in dis-integration and psychologic harms. Mindfully integrating three or four dimensi...2022-10-2118 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of BalanceThis episode explores the first of three criteria for human flourishing--balance. Balance is everywhere in the universe and should also be established in our lives. Balance amongst our four dimensions (biologic, psychologic, social, and spiritual) is essential for flourishing and we know that we are out of balance when we are not at peace. Balance amongst the dimensions has elements of both quantity and timing where we need to engage in biologic, social, and spiritual dimensions throughout the day in order to avoid the tyranny of our psychologic dimension. Practical applications include regular exercise and prayer/meditation that have been...2022-10-1517 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of Self-TranscendenceThis episode uncovers the root of how we can know whether we are truly in another dimension or merely a psychologic bystander. By truly transcending our own thoughts, emotions, and desires, we can embrace the other which leads to both ours and other people's flourishing. When we self-transcend, then we love someone or something else for their own sake and not as an instrument to gratify our own desires. We reviewed the three major pressures and the one root cause that keeps us from self-transcending. The pressures include: 1) it is not a habit many of us are trai...2022-10-1524 min

Roots of FlourishingThe Root of Our Multidimensional HumanityIn this introductory episode, we outline the four dimensions of our humanity that include the biologic, psychologic, social, and spiritual. These dimensions are all interrelated and in order to achieve full human flourishing need to be in balance, working in harmony, and mutual subordinate to one another. The spiritual is defined not as religious but as the transcendent. The transcendent includes the good, the true, and the beautiful, and ultimately God. References:George Engel’s article: The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for BiomedicineDaniel Sulmasy's article: A Biopsy...2022-10-1520 min

Forgotten TVForgotten TV ep 45-The ImmortalA complete look at ABC's 1970 TV series The Immortal starring Christopher George. Adapted by Robert Specht from James Gunn's novel 'The Immortals.' Timecodes 0-46:30 Intro/episode rundown 46:30-end Behind the Scenes The Immortal on DVD from Amazon. The Immortals novel by James Gunn. SUPPORT FORGOTTEN TV ON PATREON! Support Forgotten TV with Paypal More at Forgotten TV Book links: Science Fiction Television Series 1959 through 1989 by Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia Carol Lynley: Her Film & TV Career in Thrillers, Fantasy & Suspense by To...2021-12-082h 05