Seek Wisdom Jeremiah Pent

In this interview with Joel Salatin, we use the metaphor "life is a garden" to discuss what he's learned about life from his career as "the most famous farmer in the world." Joel has published 12 books, been featured in bestselling books and award-winning documentaries, and spoken at places like Google headquarters.

This interview series continues the discussion surrounding my recently released illustrated children's book A Good Life. Each of the interviews in the series features a guest who uniquely embodies one of the ten metaphors presented in the book. 

I've known Joel for several years, and this conversation was recorded at a picnic table on his farm on a hot August afternoon. Joel and I explore the concepts of permaculture, natural seed banks, and monocultures, and what we can learn about our individual lives from these ideas. 

In this final segment of my interview with Dr. Fred Putnam regarding my illustrated children's book, A Good Life, we discuss the Biblical metaphor of God as a farmer and it's implications for our lives, our work, our businesses, and our leadership approach. Dr. Putnam has written several books on Classical Hebrew and is Professor of Bible and Liberal Studies at Eastern University's Templeton Honors College. 

Is our reality best described by precise, scientific language, or is it better described by what we might call a more "poetic" view of the world. While we might think these two are mutually exclusive, even a quick glimpse into the expressions of the scientific community will often show the difficulty of separating the two. Scientists often struggle to describe their current understanding of their subjects without some reliance on more poetic tools such as metaphor. 

My guest Dr. Fred Putnam is professor of Bible and Liberal Studies at Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. He believes that precision and poetics both have an important role to play in how we understand our world and our experience in it. As Dr. Putnam and I continue our discussion surrounding my illustrated children’s book, A Good Life, we’ll see again how difficult it is to explain our own experience without the use of metaphor, no matter our vocation. 

I interview Dr. Fred Putnam of Templeton Honors College at Eastern University about the power of metaphor to shape our thinking and improve our lives.

We discuss my new illustrated children's book, A Good Life, which is dedicated to Dr. Putnam and follows the journey of an orphan boy who's seeking a good life and meets ten people along the way who each give him a different metaphor for life. 

We also talk about Dr. Putnam's views on education, what's wrong with our predominant education metaphor, and how we can improve it. Dr. Putnam is a popular professor whose classes are always full, and you'll understand why after hearing his views on teaching.

Finally, we discuss how metaphor can improve our relationships, our work, and our lives by making us conscious of our perspective and how it might differ from that of others.