The Ethan C. Lewin Podcast

Join me as I confront what terrifies me—including launching this podcast—in hopes of unearthing truths that set us free and help recover personal authority to forge a path uniquely our own. This podcast exists to raise to light the stories, life experiences, and messages of people from everyday walks of life. No single topic—just a shared journey aiming upward. I invite you to come alongside me as I live out this journey. After all, there’s no better time than the now.

The Ethan C. Lewin Podcast is a society podcast hosted by Ethan C. Lewin, with 72 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Ethan C. Lewin hosts The Ethan C. Lewin Podcast, a society show with 72 episodes published.

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  Episode #67

  #67 – Dr. Saul Fisher – Follow Your Loves & See Where They Take You

  Sep 25, 20262h 52m

  Saul Fisher has spent much of his life trying to understand why we are the way we are—and how paying closer attention might help us better understand and love both ourselves and one another. Born into a close-knit Jewish family and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Saul grew up sensitive, curious, and painfully aware that he was different. He struggled considerably in school, with reading, memory, math, and conventional ways of learning. But he could move. His father, a talented dancer, entertainer, and entrepreneur, gave Saul and his younger brother David the gifts of movement, rhythm, creativity, perseverance—and the tap shoes that would change their lives. Before long, the two Jewish boys from Newark were professional entertainers, performing Latin dance in hotels and nightclubs, traveling through the Catskills and Miami, and growing up in an adult world of musicians, dancers, and show business. More of that remarkable chapter can be read in Saul’s book, Tap Shoes & Mambo Rhythms, linked below. But Saul’s father was also a wound. His volatility and reactivity left Saul trying to understand not only his father, but himself—the ways people respond, the patterns families fall into, and how changing our own behavior can change a relationship. That curiosity eventually led him to psychology and a career spent helping children and families, including roughly 35 years working in the Bryn Athyn community. Now living with Parkinson’s, Saul has had to surrender some of the great loves that once defined his life, including tap dancing and birding. Yet he continues to pay attention to what is still here, and his philosophy remains consistent: follow your loves and see where they take you. Welcome to episode 67. Check Out: Shoes & Mambo Rhythms: Two Jewish Boys from Newark Find Themselves on a Latin Stage - Saul Fisher Discipline In the Context of Love – Scott Daum & Saul Fisher.mp4 Elevate the Experience Help bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo . I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School . Stay Connected Contact: https://ethanclewin.com/ A Note from Me I’m inspired by the stories people carry, the power of honest feedback, and the magic that happens when creative minds connect. If you’re a brand interested in partnering, let’s talk: LinkedIn . Thanks for being part of this journey—PEACE!

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  Episode #66

  #66 - Christopher Augustus Barber - Taste & See for Yourself

  Sep 18, 20263h 26m

  Chris Barber is an ordained New Church priest, religion teacher at the Academy of the New Church, and President of the Swedenborg Foundation. He has dedicated much of his life to studying Emanuel Swedenborg—not just his theology, but the man behind it. Chris helps bring consciousness to the remarkably human story of the man whose writings inspired the New Church—from an ambitious scientist wrestling with ego to a life increasingly oriented toward humility and the spiritual. In many ways, Swedenborg’s story is our story: the lifelong movement from the natural toward the spiritual. Those same ideas run through Chris’s own story. Once an atheist who thought religious people were deluded, he now wonders what his younger self would make of the priest he became: “Would you hate to see the man you’ve become?” We explore his deliberate effort to fairly represent and hold progressive thought and doctrinal faith in conversation with one another—and wrestle honestly with both, the importance of meeting people where they are, as they are, and a faith that leaves room for uncertainty. Because ultimately, Chris can’t prove Swedenborg saw what he said he saw. His answer is much simpler: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Try it. Live it. See what it produces. Chris's Show Notes: We covered a lot of ground in this conversation! I wanted to provide a few clarifications to a few things I said from memory, along with some titles for listeners who would like to explore the media we referenced. A Few Clarifications Re: Swedenborg's flying machine. I described his design as unpublished. Although the original drawing remained in manuscript during his lifetime, Swedenborg did publish a written proposal in his scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus , in 1716. Re: Jesper Svedberg and the Swedish Bible. I conflated some of Jesper's résumé. He was an important contributor to a Bible project in the 1690s and advocated a new translation from the original languages. The Bible I briefly referenced that was published in 1703, however, was a revision of the earlier Swedish Bible. To Learn More about Swedenborg and the New Church: Swedenborg Foundation’s Guide to the Theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg ( https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/OD_NCEGuide.pdf ) Scribe of Heaven, Swedenborg’s Life, Work, and Impact (edited by Rose, Shotwell, and Bertucci, 2005) ( https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NCE_ScribeofHeaven.pdf ) Selections of Media Referenced in this Episode: The Houseleek on the Roof: The 1874–1876 Diary of Anna Keyser Baker, a Philadelphia Swedenborgian. (transcribed, edited, annotated, and appended by me, 2026) ( https://www.brooklinebooks.com/9781955041683/the-houseleek-on-the-roof/ ) Marguerite Beck Block’s The New Church in the New World: A Study of Swedenborgianism in America. (1932; new edition for which I contributed new introduction and epilogue, 2024) ( https://bookshop.swedenborg.com/products/the-new-church-in-the-new-world-swedenborgianism/ ) Coleman Glenn’s A Little Light: Poems (2024) ( https://www.amazon.com/Little-Light-Poems-Coleman-Glenn-ebook/dp/B0DJ1K9N42 ) General Church Outreach’s YouTube (@NewChurchVideo) series Big Spiritual Questions (2020, 2021, 2023) What Dreams May Come. (Film, 1998). I also recommend the book of the same name, on which the film is based, by Richard Matheson (1978) Raymond A. Moody Jr.’s Life After Life . (1975) Martha S. Rosenthal’s Human Sexuality: From Cells to Society . (2012) Grant Schnarr’s You Can Believe! An Introduction to The New Christianity. (2006) Emanuel Swedenborg’s 1743-1744 Journal of Dreams. I like the one with commentary by Wilson Van Dusen. (1986) Disclaimer Christopher Augustus Barber appears in this interview solely in his personal capacity, not as an official representative of any institution or organization with which he is affiliated. The views expressed are his own and should not be attributed to those institutions or organizations.

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  Episode #65

  #65 - Barbara d’Amato - What Birth Can Be

  Sep 13, 20263h 25m

  Barbara d’Amato has spent nearly 50 years welcoming babies into the world—many of them from my hometown of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. She had already delivered roughly 6,000 babies by the time she closed her private practice in 2018, and one colleague estimates her lifetime total may now be closer to 10,000. Barbara’s path to midwifery began with a traumatic first birth—one that included a doctor telling her, “Don’t get your hopes up, we’re gonna lose him,” followed by eight hours not knowing whether her son would survive. Following that experience, Barbara left determined to make birth better for other women. Years later, after witnessing a completely undisturbed home birth, Barbara saw what birth could be and has spent nearly half a century since trying to preserve its humanity, dignity, and power while keeping mothers and babies safe. Only later in her career would she realize that, in helping other women, she had also been trying to heal from her own experience. At 75, Barbara reflects on that journey and opens a conversation about informed consent, childbirth education, and making women aware of the choices available to them in birth. Her story and experience are far too rich to summarize here—from raising five children and blending a family of eleven, to 24 grandchildren, to nearly five decades of continuing to work with women —the meaning at the heart of midwifery. This is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with Barbara. Welcome to episode 65. Elevate the Experience Help bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo . I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School . Stay Connected Contact: https://ethanclewin.com/

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  Episode #64

  #64 - Lori Odhner - Peel Back the Foil

  Sep 4, 20261h 38m

  Many know Lori Odhner as the voice behind the songs that shaped their childhood, filling generations of church services and bedtime routines. Underneath that is a discipline she's practiced even longer: paying attention to the person in front of her. In this conversation, Lori traces that listening thread from her father's example, through raising nine children, her marriage to John, a daily marriage column written for over a decade, and a lifetime of quilting, songwriting, and quiet caregiving. She talks candidly about growing up with a mother who struggled with bipolar disorder, and how watching that struggle, echoed years later in raising her autistic son, Ben, taught her that suffering isn't a mistake. It's often the very thing that grows compassion in us. That same conviction reshaped her marriage counseling work. She once believed it meant teaching people the formula for a good relationship: learn this, and you'll know how to do it. Instead, she found it was something else entirely: vulnerability, not judging your partner, and not trying to change them. Ultimately, Lori makes a case for a different kind of giving: we don't always need to fix someone's problem. What's always important is simply being present. It's about seeking out the sweetness hiding in almost everyone you pass, if you're willing to peel back the foil. Check Out: Marriage Moats: 101 Thoughts to Inspire and Protect Your Marriage by Lori Odhner https://caringformarriage.org/blog/ Elevate the Experience Help bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo . I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School .

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  Episode #63

  #63 - Erica Cantley - Between the Ideal and Real

  Aug 28, 20262h 14m

  There is often a gap between the way we are taught life is supposed to look and the way life actually looks. In celebration of her 60th birthday, I sit down with Miss Erica Cantley, a longtime ANC teacher and Maître D, to explore that space between the ideal and the real—and what happens when life doesn't quite match the picture we were given. Raised in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, Erica describes her experience as “exposure without suffocation,” and opens the conversation by reflecting on how people raised in the same community can walk away with entirely different relationships to faith. From there, she takes us through her own experience of navigating that space: when relationships don't look the way you thought they would, when things you were taught as ideals meet reality, and when things we once considered mistakes become some of our most formative experiences—sometimes even the places from which something unexpectedly good grows. Erica talks candidly about intimacy as a “gift from the Lord” meant to bring couples back together, why “if you can't talk about sex, you shouldn't be having it,” and the importance of “paying attention” to yourself, your body, your relationships, and what is actually happening rather than forcing life to fit the ideal. Along the way, she reminds us that “the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of your relationships.” Ultimately, this is a conversation about meeting people where they are—not because the ideal doesn't matter, but because none of us live there perfectly. Erica's 60 years offer a refreshing reminder that the gift is not the perfect life; the gift is the ability to keep going. Welcome to episode 63. Checkout Teaching HAMLET as my Father Died Maitre d’ Diaries Podcast Elevate the Experience Help bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo . I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School . Stay Connected Contact: https://ethanclewin.com/ A Note from Me I’m inspired by the stories people carry, the power of honest feedback, and the magic that happens when creative minds connect. If you’re a brand interested in partnering, let’s talk: LinkedIn . Thanks for being part of this journey—PEACE!

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