Michael is joined by his sister, Christa, for an extended conversational recap on the Three Powers Series. In this first part, they discuss a wide range of things in unedited conversation. The origin of the podcast name Nothing Human. The meaning of Augustine’s pears. Will-oriented academics. Lifting up your subject power. And more. LINKS Michael’s Patreon Terence, “Nothing human is alien to me” Maya Angelou “Nothing Human” Interview Aquinas on Affections as Bodily Appetite Sack of Rome (AD 410)—Augustine lived from AD 354–430 William Lane Craig on Light/Dark Good/Evil Plotinus Great Chain of Being The Diet of Worms (Martin Luther) Archimedes’ Last Words TRANSCRIPT (Time Stamps Approximate) 00:00:00:04 - 00:01:01:23 Michael This is episode 21 of the Nothing Human Podcast. Nothing Human Conversations: Three Powers Recap with Christa, Part 1. Welcome to the Nothing Human podcast, a biblically-informed thinkspace for exploring and articulating all the ways we make or break sense of human experience. I’m your host, Michael Minkoff. From my youngest days, I’ve been fascinated with categories of thought—those often unconscious filing mechanisms that invisibly populate our premises, direct our inquiries, and ordain our conclusions. Join me as we investigate and interrogate our assumptions in an effort to articulate a more cohesive understanding of human information within the superstructure of God’s truth. 00:01:01:25 - 00:02:19:23 Michael Well, you asked for it, and you got it, though you might regret it. The next few episodes of the podcast will be an extended conversation with my sister, Christa. It will function as a conversational recap on the three powers series. I also did video for these episodes. As you can see, if you’re watching on YouTube or Spotify. I’m hoping that it’s on Spotify. But if it’s not because I couldn’t work it out, just head over to my YouTube channel. And there’s a link in my show notes on my website. Speaking of my website, all the episodes for Nothing Human and my bonus podcast, Being Something Extra are available on my website, NothingHumanPodcast.com. Now, if you have any questions or comments, please comment on the relevant episode on my website. And I will make sure to respond either there or in a podcast. So if you want to support me and my work, you can do that. That’s really helpful to me actually. I really love speaking and having response and not just speaking out into a vacuum. Also, please rate and review this podcast wherever you are listening to it. That really helps me a lot. And if you want to support me even further, you can become my Patron for as little as $5 a month on Patreon. There’s a link also to that in the show notes on my website. And I really do appreciate all of you for your support. Now let’s get into this first part of my conversation with Christa. 00:02:26:15 - 00:02:31:24 Michael Well, I am here as promised, after many extra episodes, with my sister, Christa. 00:02:31:26 - 00:02:32:24 Christa Hi. 00:02:32:26 - 00:02:38:12 Michael She is sort of the originator of at least some of the reason why I’m doing this podcast. 00:02:38:12 - 00:02:39:17 Christa You give me too much credit. 00:02:39:18 - 00:02:43:13 Michael I’m not. I’m not giving you too much credit. I’m just saying what is. 00:02:43:14 - 00:02:44:10 Christa Okay. 00:02:44:12 - 00:02:58:18 Michael I probably wouldn’t have done this podcast for my own sake. And you’re one of the few people who was like, hey, you really need to do that because I want to know what you’re talking about, but I’m not going to read your articles, and … or I will, but they’re just hard for me, okay? 00:02:58:24 - 00:02:59:00 Christa Yeah. 00:02:59:05 - 00:03:00:06 Michael I don’t want to insult you. 00:03:00:08 - 00:03:01:13 Christa No. I’m not insulted. 00:03:01:14 - 00:03:02:06 Michael All right. Good. 00:03:03:05 - 00:03:57:19 Michael So after she said, hey, you should probably go ahead and do something like this. Because I like the more conversational thing, and I was like, of course, you know, I’m going to come and I’m going to do this podcast just by myself, and it’s going to be all very prepared and everything. And I don’t know that that’s exactly meeting the need. I’ve heard from a number of people that they want to hear more conversation, more dialog, more feedback. So, this is the purpose of that. And I’m hoping that it is functional and effective for that purpose. We have … she came up with a number of questions and comments that from the first few episodes, the … of the three powers series. So this will be a little bit of a recap on the three powers series. And I don’t know how many podcast episodes this will generate, but I hope that it is useful for you all. So let’s get into it. This is Christa, my sister. 00:03:57:19 - 00:03:58:20 Christa Hello. 00:03:58:25 - 00:04:05:17 Michael And we’re actually recording video of this, and it’s the first time I’m going to record any of these podcasts as video, so… 00:04:05:21 - 00:04:06:06 Christa Oh really? 00:04:06:06 - 00:04:17:02 Michael Yeah. Oh yeah. I’ve done little videos and stuff for you know, Instagram Reels and such. But I have not done any long-form podcast type videos, so… 00:04:17:03 - 00:04:18:12 Christa I feel very honored. 00:04:18:15 - 00:04:30:23 Michael Yeah. So I just … I wasn’t confident that I would look good enough to make that work. So I was like, oh, Christa is coming on, so at least they’ll have something nice to look at for the … 00:04:30:26 - 00:04:33:00 Christa Or if not, there’s the background of the trees. 00:04:33:00 - 00:04:45:03 Michael Yeah, the trees back there and the pond. We’re actually recording this at my parents’ house, and they’re upstairs. And we told them we were recording. But of course, there’s about 7,000 people here always. 00:04:45:04 - 00:04:45:18 Christa Always. 00:04:45:18 - 00:04:57:12 Michael So there’s something going on. Who knows. We might be interrupted, but we’re just going to keep it going and just be natural and free-flowing. Because that’s the point of these, So. So go ahead. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit. 00:04:57:14 - 00:05:17:02 Christa All right. So before we even get into any of the episodes, I’m interested to know why did you choose “Nothing Human”? And or choose the phrase, “Nothing human could be alien to me”? Who is that quote from and who is the speaker? 00:05:17:04 - 00:07:01:13 Michael So the quote is originally from Terence, who was a Roman playwright. And he is considered by some to be the father of humanism. So a lot of people hear humanism and they think secular humanism or anti-Christian humanism. But humanism is just that branch of study that kind of developed with the Greeks. But it was in the Renaissance. It was the idea that we want to know anything that can be known, humanly speaking, and in terms of human culture and human realities. And Terence, the quote from Terence, kind of basically means anything that could be generated by a human or understood by a human could be generated or understood by me, because I am a human. So I’m not going to allow anything that is human to be alien to me. And that is having to do with all sorts of things, not just knowledge and constructed knowledge and categories of thought, but also has to do with human experience and the ways that people operate in the world. And I thought it was a good name for this podcast, because I want to be able to be free to talk about whatever I want to talk about. And so that was part of the reason for that. I also thought it was just kind of a fun title in the sense of like, “Nothing human. What are you talking about?” It’s almost like everything human. So I like the a little bit of the irony of that. But also since it’s within the “superstructure of biblical truth,” there’s the idea of like the truth that I’m talking about isn’t ultimately human, even though it’s addressing all the things that humans can know. I’m hoping that the truth that we’re receiving and that I’m talking about is divine, at least in origin, if not in application. And I found this really wonderful interview with Maya Angelou, the poet… 00:07:01:13 - 00:07:02:26 Christa I thought that might be who it was. 00:07:02:28 - 00:07:34:05 Michael Yeah. And so I, I stole the audio because she’s actually talking about this quote. And the way that she uses the quote is really wonderful. Like, maybe I’ll link in the show notes to the particular interview that I scraped this audio from, but, I used it as a sample for this particular podcast because I thought it was … I thought she said it really well. She also quotes it in Latin because, of course, she’s like super erudite and really smart. She has a wonderful voice. 00:07:34:07 - 00:07:34:20 Christa She does. 00:07:34:20 - 00:07:49:05 Michael And she talks about the experience of understanding that all the people who have ever hated her … So she was, you know, she was very heavily abused. I don’t know if you’ve heard. But if you’ve read, like, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” 00:07:49:07 - 00:07:56:06 Christa I, I’m bad about reading books to the very end, but I get little parts of it. I’m not totally familiar with it, though. 00:07:56:08 - 00:08:44:12 Speaker 2 She is very familiar with trauma and treated really badly by other people. And so you can imagine that she would other-ize these victimizers and abusers. But in this quote, she talks about how that too is not alien to me. That I also understand the humanness of my abusers and … and the people who’ve done all these terrible things in the world. I also have to enter into that exper
