Giving Shape to Desire: Fr. Gabriel Torretta

This week, we speak with Fr. Gabriel Torretta, a Dominican priest and lover of beauty, the art of Fra Angelico, and Japanese literature.  In this podcast, Fr. Gabriel shares how beauty and desire have played a role in his personal conversion. Marcellino and Fr. Gabriel discuss friendship, the crippling effects of living a moralistic version of Christianity, how the faith rightly lived is an integration of the whole person, how beauty gives shape to desire, and the power of discovering the person Jesus Christ.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Riding Waves and Finding Passion: Matt Meeks

This week, we speak with Matt Meeks, the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  In this podcast, Matt shares his personal journey of discovering his vocation and his passion for digital marketing and creating unity in the Church. He tells us how he went from being a crazy college kid who held a professor’s planter canaries ransom to being a leader in the New Renaissance of Catholic digital evangelization and working with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He talks about the importance of being a unified church in pursuing our mission to evangelize and also gives advice to those at the beginning of their careers on how to seize opportunities and make decisions.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Capitalism, Unity, and Faith: Keith Hamilton

This week, we speak with Keith Hamilton, Catholic entrepreneur and creator of The Great Commission Summit.  In this podcast, Anthony and Keith discuss the need for unity and collaboration in the Catholic world. They talk about capitalism, the story behind the birth of the GC Summit, and how healthy businesses can change the world.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

21st Century Storytelling: Sarah Yaklic

This week, we have a conversation with Sarah Yaklic, digital media specialist and the director of the Grotto Network. In this podcast, Marcellino and Sarah discuss changing the paradigm of how we as Catholic Creatives use and think about social media. They talk about what transformation in social media platforms would look like, how the Father calls us to work alongside him in this mission, and how we can encourage one another to create in freedom with the Father and fight the urge to perform.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

The Dating Problem: Megan Harrington

This week, we have a real and vulnerable conversation with Megan Harrington, producer of the documentary The Dating Project. Anthony and Megan discuss her experience making the film and dive into what she learned about the dating problem from working on the project.  During the interview, they share stories from their own dating experiences, talk about the relationship between sex and the dating problem, and address issues such as first dates, breakups, rejection, pornography,  and shame.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Creativity and Wealth: Frank Hanna

This week, we’re talking with Frank Hanna, an investor of 35 years and author of the books A Graduate’s Guide to Life and What Your Money Means. In this podcast, Marcellino and Frank have an enlightening discussion about God’s gifts of money and wealth. They talk about Frank’s experiences growing up in a business-oriented family, the Church’s scarcity mindset when it comes to talking about money, and how we need to change that mindset to be one of gratitude and trust.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Share Beauty Through Content: Angela Wasko

This week, Anthony is joined by Angela Wasko, who worked for TOMS Shoes and is now the social media manager for FOCUS Catholic.

Growing up on a farm in rural Iowa, Angela found her creative roots in a unique and entrepreneurial way. Despite being a very different lifestyle from her childhood, she was encouraged to take risks that led her to exciting opportunities.

She talks about her experiences of putting in the hard yards to create opportunities, how being out of her element and comfort zone helped her find her faith, her personal WHY, and making the transition from a secular corporation to working for the Catholic Church and what the trials of balancing work and faith life are for both of those work environments.

Join the discussion on what would it look like if we worked together as ministries to most efficiently utilize social media. How many more could we reach?

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Fatherhood and Sacrifice: Patrick Kilner

This week, Anthony speaks to Patrick Kilner, owner of TowerHill Realty, a real estate brokerage company. Patrick is an intensely devoted husband and father of seven free-range kids.

Patrick discusses how fatherhood has framed everything in his life, even the way he leads his business. He explains the importance of being dispensable at work, how to find the right vessels for one’s talents and skills, and how to create a culture of sacrifice and hard work. Having faced the death of a child, he also delves into the process of mourning and the effect that has had on his work philosophy.

Check out the book Patrick recommends: Rocket Fuel

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Being a Multidimensional Catholic: Madison Mitchell

This week Marcellino talks with Madison Mitchell: singer, dancer, and actress. She is passionately Catholic and finding success performing in Broadway musicals, most recently as a member of Cats.

They discuss theatrics and find comparisons to the liturgy in how people are drawn to encounter a different reality. She explains how she finds a connection to God through her performances and how to be re-inspired again and again within the monotony of performances.

They then dive deep into the necessity of having open and empathetic conversations about difficult issues, and why one has to be a multidimensional person to see others as multidimensional.

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Spiritual Entrepreneurship: Bob Keith

Today, we’re talking with Bob Keith, entrepreneur and executive who has been working in the entrepreneurial space for over 30 years and currently teaches at the Busch School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America. In this podcast, we hear about his journey from consulting at Fortune 500 companies to becoming a Catholic and working with spiritual entrepreneurs. Bob and Anthony talk about the Church’s deep entrepreneurial roots and how we can learn business and startup lessons from the saints and spiritual leaders in our past.

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

How NOT To Raise $80,000: MariVi Deliz and Therese Bussen

This week, Anthony chats with MariVi Deliz and Therese Bussen about their involvement in the 8beats project. MariVi is a communications jack of all trades for a secular non-profit. She ran the 8beats IndieGoGo campaign and was a large force for its success. Terese has been a writer for the Denver Catholic newspaper and now is a freelance writer and expectant mom. She came on board with 8beats to be a writer and ended up as a full-blown marketing director and strategist.

They discuss how wounds that are created and triggered by systems and mindsets in the Church can be healed even while having to work with the very things that caused them. Therese and MariVi also share their tips on putting together a crowdfunding campaign, how to get over the fear of starting, and how to decide what is worth volunteering your time and talents for by looking at deep desires versus being guilted into it.  

You can still preorder the 8beats film by visiting our IndieGoGo page.

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors for making this podcast possible.

Philosophy, Beauty, and Pipe Tobacco: Christopher Haley

Today we spend some time in deep philosophical discussion with Christopher Haley, Director of Communications at the Hildebrand Project. Christopher is a poetry-loving former atheist who once started a philosophy club in high school and eventually made his way to the Catholic Church. He talks with us about living the reflective life, his journey to the faith, the philosophy of Christian Personalism, and the best way to smoke a pipe in your home study.

Check out Christopher's tobacco, pipe, literature, music, fine art, and movie recommendations. 

A big thanks to our Patreon sponsors who made this podcast possible! If you're enjoying the podcast, please consider becoming a patron. Thanks for listening.

Theology of the Bodybuilder: Jared Zimmerer

Today, we’re talking with Jared Zimmerer, a husband and father of 6, and bodybuilder/fitness enthusiast who works as an author, speaker, and writer for Word on Fire. In this podcast, Jared and Anthony have a great discussion about how to bring your body into the spiritual journey. They talk about how ascetic practices like working out, cold showers, and fasting can help impact your spiritual life, what the Catholic Church can learn from the fitness community, and how fitness and Theology of the Body are connected.

A huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who made this podcast possible.

Creating in Sonship: Jason Jensen

Welcome back to the podcast, where we get together to learn from leaders in the Catholic Creative world every week. Fun fact we wanted to share: we now have listeners in over 25 countries, including Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. So wherever you are right now, thank you for listening.

Today, we’re talking with Jason Jensen, a married father of 4 from Vancouver and the Director of Strategy at Glass Canvas. Glass Canvas recently hosted the Catholic Creatives team to talk about future strategy for the organization, and today, Marcellino and Jason talk about speaking the unspoken to be more effective, why it’s dangerous to confuse identity and vocation, how the Father wants to pour love out on us every day, and why willing to be small is the Church’s answer to the modern world.

A big thank you to our Patreon sponsors who make this podcast possible.

Community and Belief: Joe Marshall and Tommy Marshall

Hey, everybody, and welcome to the podcast, where we talk to leaders in the Catholic Creative world and share their stories and insights with you. We hope that you had an awesome Christmas season and a great start to the new year.

Today, we’re talking with brothers Joe Marshall and Tommy Marshall about their work in web and software development. Joe and Tommy both spoke at the first Catholic Creatives summit, and in this episode they share their experience of starting an agency in their parents’ attic, recording an album that now earns them less than a dollar a year on Spotify, changing their careers from freelance to working at big agencies, and growing communities within the Church.

A big thank you to our Patreon sponsors who make this podcast possible.

Enjoy the episode.

Abundance and Stewardship: Matt Pinto

In this episode, we talk with Matt Pinto, founder and president of Ascension Press, about his journey of Catholic entrepreneurship and ministry. Matt is a great example of someone bringing the lessons of entrepreneurship and the business world into the service of the Church in a powerful way, so I’m excited for us to learn from him and get inspired to face our own creative challenges.

This episode is brought to you by our Patreon sponsors. Thank you all so much for your support.

Enjoy the episode!

Learning like an Artist: Cory Heimann and Mark Guiney

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast! You all know Cory Heimann of Likeable Art, and today we’re discussing creative education with Cory and Likeable Art intern Mark Guiney, who just finished a three-year stint as a middle school teacher.

Cory and Mark recently led a Catholic Creative Meetup event to discuss creative education and how to raise up the next generation of makers to communicate the beauty of the Faith to the world. One of the main takeaways from the event was the need for new creators to get real-world experience in work as well as the inspiration to undertake a creative life.

Likeable Art has been embodying this belief with its intern program, which several Catholic Creatives have participated in. We wanted to find out from Mark what the program’s been like, what he’s been learning (and unlearning) about creative work, and about his first task at Likeable Art, which was the very serious job of renovating a dollhouse for a video shoot.

Let’s jump right in and hear how Mark got the internship.

Corey Heimann believes beauty will save the world.

Mark Guiney is committed to beauty as mission.

The Crucible of Collaboration: Sam Sorich

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast! So sorry for being out for a while, but we have been busy with this 8beats project. Which we will be talking a bit about today.  We’re talking with Sam Sorich, director at Glass Darkly Films… the guy who came up with the whole project. I can’t wait for you to meet him. Ever since he and I met at seminary, his radical commitment to being different has inspired me, including his stint living in a van and his passion for a new wave of Catholic cinema.

The subject today is the crucible of collaboration, and how to get through the insecurities of art making. 

If you’ve ever worked in a participatory art like film, theatre, or music, you know the challenge of bringing an idea to life at a high level of quality, within practical limitations, and alongside other people. This is something that Sam and I and the whole team 8beats team were experiencing intensely last month. It started with a big idea, and we invited the community to collaborate. We got excited, got into teams, those teams grew to about 130 people in total, and we got to work. We put this gigantic promise out into the world, released the IndieGoGo… and then we had to rewrite a bunch of our scripts, and our IndieGoGo plateaued, and we were hit with tons of fear. Can we really do this? Will the church actually support this sort of risk? Can we trust each other to stick out the challenges and creative conflict? 

This conversation is about that journey and what we learned from it: that through trust and commitment to each other, a new creative energy is discovered that brings about better art and creates deep relationships at the same time.

Before we start, if you haven’t shared our IndieGoGo campaign for 8beats yet, please head over to the 8beats Facebook page and share our latest post. All the regional teams begin filming the stories this month, and we need your help and the help of the Catholic community to see the project through. Please collaborate with us by spreading the word, donating, and praying for the project.

Create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.
 

What They Never Taught You About Modernism: Jonathan Anderson

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we’re talking about modernism and the philosophical and theological questions posed by modern art. Joining us today is Jonathan Anderson, an artist, art critic, and associate professor of art at Biola University.

We all know that modern art gets a bad rap in the Catholic world. When we compare a traditional icon to a contemporary abstract painting or traditional chant to some modern musical compositions, we find the stuff made less than about 500 years ago a little difficult to appreciate. But instead of calling for a wholesale return to tradition, we need to find a way to understand and access modern art and participate in the conversation it inspires.

Jonathan is all about the theological implications and underpinnings of modern art. He recently co-authored the book Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism. Our conversation today gets into some of the serious philosophical and theological implications of modernism, and Jonathan provides a great context for understanding contemporary art in the modernist movement. He tells us the best way to start our own personal quest to appreciate modern art. And perhaps most importantly, he gives a definition of art that we need to all think about and discuss.  

So strap yourselves in and get your thinking caps on.

Before we get started, Catholic Creatives just launched its first major collaboration! Our team of over 100 Catholic artists and filmmakers have begun work on a groundbreaking film made by the millennial generation, for the millennial generation. The film is called 8beats, and it is an anthology film exploring the collision of the Beatitudes into our human experience. We believe these challenging stories provoke a re-examination of happiness, suffering, and the meaning of life. We’re looking for people to join us in generating stories that matter through the power of film. Go check out the project on Indiegogo, and like us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Please share our Indiegogo link to help spread the word. By supporting this project, you will be putting a world-changing idea into motion.

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.

Mingo Palacios: Art-Show Ministries and Parking-Lot Churches

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast. This is our first ecumenical episode, and it’s going to blow your mind. We’re talking with Mingo Palacios, Pastor of Evangelism & Culture at Saddleback Church, which was the church of Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life.

In our community, we’re constantly asking how we can creatively refresh and reframe the experience of the truth for people who haven’t encountered it in that raw, life-changing way. We see the beauty of tradition but don’t want tradition to be an arbitrary stumbling block for people who need to hear the Church’s message. I think Mingo shares some incredibly important ideas that we can use in our creative ministry to the Church and the culture. I encourage you to listen and brainstorm what we could learn from his example and what we can bring to our local churches and the Church as a whole.

Mingo also tells us how Led Zepplin helped kick off his first youth pastor job, how his church started an incubator program for young entrepreneurs and creatives, and how he helped his church reach out to the unreachable with microsite services in parking lots and laundromats.

Before we get started, if you haven’t signed up to participate in 8 Beats yet, the deadline is July 21st, which in real time is tomorrow. Over 80 filmmakers, designers, marketing professionals, and artists from across North America are creating 8 short films inspired by the themes of the eight Beatitudes. There’s still lots of opportunity for collaboration, and you definitely want to be a part of this, so sign up!

As always, create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.