Hello, everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's

episode.

Until recently, I didn't think that humans could choose loneliness, that there were sometimes forces more powerful

than the wish to avoid loneliness.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Reading with Joy, my summer book club where we are exploring

Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishi Guru, a book about what it means to be human, loneliness, technology, and many,

many other things. Today, I am delighted to be joined by a friend, a scholar, and what is your

official title at Regent College? I am the registrar at Region College. The Registrar at

Regent College, James Smoker. Welcome on the show, James. Thank you, Joy. I'm the registrar at Regent College. The registrar at Regent College. James Smoker. Welcome on the show, James. Thank you, Joy. I'm glad to be here. James and I have one of the same supervisors at St. Andrews. So that is how we first, well, I don't know if that's how we first met, but that's the origin. St. Andrews is the origin of our friendship.

And James is now doing interesting work over at Vancouver,

in region college while still finishing his PhD.

So I've given you a little bit of an introduction,

but why don't you say it more about yourself and what you do and what you research?

Sure.

Yeah.

So I am from Vancouver, from Canada, and had done my master's at Region College.

And from there, went on to do a PhD.

And I had friends out in St. Andrews and someone recommended one of the people out there to be a supervisor. So off to Scotland, my family,

and I went to start the same program that Joy that you're in and the Institute of Theology,

Imagination, the Arts over there. My area, my dissertation is on the romantic English poet, Samuel

...