Ken Myers, Host and Producer

Ken Myers did his first radio interview in 1972 when he was 19, working in college radio. His first guest was Johnny Cash. Although he wonders at times whether he peaked early, Myers insists that sociologists, historians, psychologists, and even economists can be just as interesting as country music singers.

After earning his B.A. from the University of Maryland in Communications with an emphasis in Film Theory, Myers went to work for National Public Radio (NPR), editing material for arts and performance programs. After three years, he decided to go to seminary to pursue a teaching ministry. He realized how theologically ill-prepared most Christians (including himself) were to contend with the non-Christian worldviews increasingly prevalent in major cultural institutions.

But having finished a Masters of Arts in Religion at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1979 and finding no institutions committed to the sort of cultural apologetics he thought were needed by the Church, he accepted an offer to return to NPR to serve as arts and humanities editor for the then-new program Morning Edition.

A budgetary crisis in the ’80s cost Myers his job at NPR, but his interest in promoting a more theologically alert approach to cultural issues eventually led to his establishing Mars Hill Audio in 1992, after having edited a number of print publications and working with Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson. Since then, he has interviewed hundreds of leading scholars and public intellectuals on their areas of cultural expertise.

In addition to his work at Mars Hill Audio, Myers serves as Music Director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He writes a regular column for Touchstone magazine on sacred choral music, and is the author of All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (2nd ed., Crossway, 2012). Myers lectures frequently in churches and colleges, and he also writes for various publications, many of which are available online.

Myers lives in the rolling countryside of central Virginia north of Charlottesville with his wife, Kate. He and Kate have two grown children, Susannah and Jonathan, and four grandchildren.

Click here to read (and watch) profile pieces about Ken Myers from various media

Links to lectures and commentary by Ken Myers:

  • Turn to the Lord your God — Ken Myers introduces musical settings from the book of Lamentations, traditionally sung during Holy Week. (26 minutes)
  • The relationship between prudence and reality  — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how the virtue of prudence is fundamentally connected with a deep and anchored understanding of reality. (54 minutes)
  • The mysteries and glory of Christmas and its music — Ken Myers presents examples of music from five centuries that capture some sense of the astonishing fact of the Nativity of our Lord. (15 minutes)
  • The mysteries and glory of Christmas and its music — Ken Myers presents examples of music from five centuries that captures some sense of the astonishing fact of the Nativity of our Lord. (26 minutes)
  • The music and the notes are precious — Ken Myers encourages an understanding of the Church as a particular culture that should be nourished and sustained, and then describes the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose. (27 minutes)
  • The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
  • The inevitability of escalating public animosity — With excerpts from books and lectures by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O'Donovan, and Wendell Berry, Ken Myers argues that modern political theory has guaranteed increasing levels of public conflict. (19 minutes)
  • Stabat Mater dolorosa — Ken Myers offers some thoughts on the aesthetics of sympathy, and introduces some of the musical settings of the remarkable medieval poem known as “Stabat Mater dolorosa.” (23 minutes)
  • Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
  • Seven Messianic titles, seven attributes of Christ — Ken Myers introduces listeners to four composers who each have set all seven of the O Antiphons to music. (17 minutes)
  • Renaissance music for Good Friday — In a special Feature for Good Friday, Ken Myers shares settings of passages from the Book of Lamentations and of the Tenebrae Responsories by Tomás Luis de Victoria. (18 minutes)
  • Pierced feet, wounded side, bloodied head — As Passiontide begins (the coming Sunday), Ken Myers introduces listeners to Membra Jesu Nostri, an hour-long cycle of seven cantatas written about 1680 by Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707). (16 minutes)
  • Passions before Bach — In preparation for Holy Week, Ken Myers presents a whirlwind music history lesson with musical examples from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. (22 minutes)
  • No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
  • Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
  • Music and the meaning of Creation — In this 2018 lecture, Ken Myers advocates for a recovery of the pre-Enlightenment idea of the intelligibility of music. (61 minutes)
  • Meditative music for Passiontide — At the start of Passiontide, Ken Myers introduces listeners to works by the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus which highlight the theme of lamentation. (18 minutes)
  • In praise of a hierarchy of taste — In a lecture at a CiRCE Institute conference, Ken Myers presented a rebuttal to the notion that encouraging the aesthetic appreciation of “higher things” is elitist and undemocratic. (58 minutes)
  • In dulci jubilo — Ken Myers introduces some of the music for the season composed by Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), best known for his settings of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (“Lo how a rose e’er blooming”) and In dulci jubilo. (18 minutes)
  • Genealogy of a work of praise — For Good Friday, Ken Myers tells the history of the text and music behind the popular hymn, “O Sacred Head, now wounded.” (27 minutes)
  • Friendship and life together — In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
  • Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
  • Festivity and the goodness of Creation — Drawing on Josef Pieper’s ideas, Ken Myers explains why the spirit of festivity is the spirit of worship, and that “entertainment” is ultimately an artificial, contrived, and empty effort to achieve festivity. (25 minutes)
  • Earthly things in relation to heavenly realities — In this lecture, Ken Myers argues that the end of education is to train students to recognize what is really real. The things of this earth are only intelligible in light of heavenly realities. (59 minutes)
  • Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
  • Constructing your Favorites List — Ken Myers describes the new ecosystem of Mars Hill Audio’s membership/partnership program and shares clips from five recent lectures released as Bonus Features. (26 minutes)