From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

I try and express that, and it costs to my faith that I'm just an everyday American, and if this could happen to me, it could happen to you.

People need to be prepared for what they want to stand for and what they don't.

This is your host, Scott Bertram, and that's Jack Phillips,

the Colorado Baker whose religious liberty case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He has a book out called The Cost of My Faith.

We'll talk about that with him in just a little bit.

First on today's program, we're joined by Dr. Stephen Smith,

Dean of Humanities, Temple

Family Chair in English Literature and Professor of English at Hillsdale College. Dr. Smith,

thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Dr. Smith also is your teacher for the new online

course found at online.hillsdale.edu on Dante's Divine Comedy. The course will be released

on May 25th, but you can pre-enroll right now and be ready for it on the 25th. Online.hillsdale.

What should people expect from the new online course?

They should expect to meet this great poet Dante Ligieri and to experience with him the journey from the inferno to the paradiso.

Also speaking very broadly, the purpose of the course is to provide a spark for the reader, for the viewer, to enkindle desire and really move them to read and to study this great poem.

As Dante remarks in one of his letters, I wish everyone a tragic beginning

and a comic ending. So tell us a little bit about the Divine Comedy. What are the three

parts that will be studied? So the overall title is the comedy. So it is a poem with a happy ending.

It begins, however, in the dark wood. And the first part of the poem is the comedy. So it is a poem with a happy ending. It begins, however, in the dark wood,

and the first part of the poem is the inferno. The second part of the poem is to Purgatorioo,

and the third part of the poem is to Paradiso. So Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise. A three-part

...