If you ever meet Gerald Early, you may recognize him from a Ken Burns special or two. He’s been a guest on six of Burns’s documentaries, discussing boxing, baseball, jazz, and more. Early is the quintessential cultural critic: all things interest him, everything matters, and each thing interweaves and comments on the next. He has written about boxing and baseball, but also beauty pageants, mystery novels, crime novels, classic novels, movies, music, and more. High culture, low culture, sports and leisure, politics and religion—if it touches on American culture, it shows up in his work. In 1994, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture. His other honors include a Whiting Award and a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. These days, his essays pour forth in the pages of The Common Reader, a journal of essays he edits and directs. From month to month, you can find him exploring ideas, testing theories, and, above all, discovering common ties of humanity through every aspect of culture. A lifelong member of the Episcopalian Church, he is a professor of English and African American studies at Washington University, and one of the first faculty fellows of the Carver Project, a nonprofit focused on connecting university, church, and society. He was interviewed by Abram Van Engen.