There aren’t easy answers to the problems fracking creates, and, like many industries, fracking generates losers and winners. But by spending time up close with the issues, Jerolmack models a good approach to complex problems. | Continue reading
If you do follow Woodlief's advice, you'll need a thick skin and a dogged commitment to first principles. Self-government takes time and effort, and too many people really do want to leave the driving to the experts. | Continue reading
Life is ambiguous, murky, rife with situations that elude dogma’s capture. When the seas get rough, however, our tolerance of this is one of the first things hucked overboard. For example: have we felt into what it’s like to be a five-year-old walking into school in the morning? | Continue reading
Examining, with Paul Kemeny, Richard Gamble, and Ben Faber, fraught moments in history where questions about communication and censorship, politics and propaganda, freedom and government intervention came to a head. What might we learn from such moments? | Continue reading
Immortality might not last forever. But I contend that Ed will—through his words and through the lives of those he touched with his generosity and his grace. All of which leads, to a simple blessing, a benediction. “Oh, wow.” | Continue reading
Neither Columbiana nor Sewickley perfectly realize the role of Cram’s ideal walled town, but Sewickley comes much closer. While not perfect, it offers a real-world example of an economically vibrant, urban community. | Continue reading
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Advent, which is also the start of the Christian year. I’m taking the month off from compiling these Water Dippers as I’ll be spending more time offline reading old stuff. Look for these to resume after Christmas. “Why I Am Fleeing to the Hills.” A … | Continue reading
The imagined student’s intentions are honorable: to promote racial justice. But when the conversation begins, she has already set herself against the teacher and the course. The task of the teacher is to encourage her pursuit of justice while showing that the Great Books are not … | Continue reading
John Kennedy Toole denies Ignatius such a happy ending, subverting the traditional redemption narrative. In so doing, he arguably gives us a better portrait of what life actually tends to be like. | Continue reading
Michael J. Astrue has earned degrees from Yale and Harvard. He had a long and distinguished legal career and held several government positions as well as leadership posts in biotech companies. From 2007-2013, he served as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A … | Continue reading
Is there an alternative to the Ted Lasso cynicism-versus-optimism dichotomy, an alternative that recognizes human limitations but nonetheless offers hope? I might start with becoming attentive enough to our ignorance, and expectant enough of our own mistakes that we not overshoot … | Continue reading
“George MacDonald: a Life of Relationships.” Radix Magazine interviewed Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson about George MacDonald and what lessons he might have for us today. MacDonald and his circle “intentionally sought relationship with those around them even, perhaps especially, if they … | Continue reading
I had seen the worst of America: the brittle surface of “good design” shattered by rage, and the reverse snobbery of the rest of America. Still, I wasn’t about to permit myself a trip like this, with such visual and emotional assault, without some kind of further insurance. | Continue reading
As we come to the supper table to feast upon pheasant breast or the backstrap of a whitetail deer, we gain an inkling of that invitation to the true Table of Hospitality, where the Lord looks upon us lovingly despite our attack upon him. | Continue reading
I didn’t intend to welcome two children into an era marked by so much bleakness and turmoil. With James’s help, I’ve remembered that there is no project more local, no gift more world-changing, than the calling of parenthood. | Continue reading
“In Memoriam: Gerald Russello.” Susannah Black remembers the life of a fine man who, among other things, served as the editor of the University Bookman: “He was convinced that this writing and reading and talking and arguing and institution-building and movement-making, and these … | Continue reading
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get close to the woods, get close to God, get close to real community. All of the small, old things. Build networks of grounde … | Continue reading
Catullus is not a saint. He is not a moral poet. But his crudity and madness still dance with the shadows of truth and echo with the cry of the human heart. | Continue reading
Alan Noble is author of the new book You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World from IVP. Dr. Noble is a professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and a founder of Christ and Pop Culture. Cultural Debris Patreon – Support the podcast! You Are Not Your Ow … | Continue reading
What makes Blythe a joy to read is this rare combination of literary erudition, keen observation of both men and nature, and a reserved, peaceful piety. What is immediately apparent and most appealing about his work is his obvious care for everything he writes about. | Continue reading
“We are What we Eat.” Aruna Uprety describes the deleterious effects of advertising and packaged food on the health of children in rural Nepal: “The traditional practice of growing and consuming locally grown lentils, soybean, millet and buckwheat is being replaced even in the re … | Continue reading
Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold. | Continue reading
The tragedy of the hold Hoover’s rugged individualism continues to have on the American psyche in our increasingly atomized age is that his formulation risks presenting a false dichotomy between state control over an increasingly large swath of our lives on the one hand and socie … | Continue reading
Host: John Murdock Guest: Will Hoyt Will Hoyt, author of The Seven Ranges, discusses his journey along the Ohio River into the physical, historical and philosophical interior of the strip-mined region where he lives. In the book, Hoyt transforms the area’s colorful past into a … | Continue reading
Thinking as a practice places a check upon the self. It offers us a way out of our "res idiotica." If our universities are faithful to their missions, they must foster conditions where truth is free to be heard and sought. | Continue reading
“I Tried to Prove that Small Family Farms are the Future. I Couldn’t Do It.” Sarah Mock published a long, thoughtful examination of the viability of the small, family farmer (thanks to Russell Fox for drawing my attention to it). It’s a sobering essay and worth reading carefully. … | Continue reading
Valetudinarianism connects arguments about the pandemic and the climate, with, on the one side, a distrust of experts and politicians, and, on the other, the belief that science (however defined) is paramount and must dictate, not simply advise, policy. | Continue reading
Michael Knowles: “Free speech cannot be an open plain; nor can it be a jungle; it must be a delicately manicured garden." | Continue reading
My guest is Professor Todd Hartch of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. A specialist in the history of religion, particularly Latin American religion, Todd has written a new book A Time to Build Anew: How to Find the True, Good, and the Beautiful in America. You’ll enjoy ou … | Continue reading
“Growing things are good” isn’t a sufficiently coherent claim for a book. While the questions and problems that Andrew Peterson raises in The God of the Garden are thorny and complex, his ideas deserve greater development. | Continue reading
“Economists to Cattle Ranchers: Stop Being So Emotional About the Monopolies Devouring Your Family Businesses.” Matt Stoller argues that professional economists are stonewalling efforts to combat monopolistic price-fixing in the cattle market. “An Emersonian Guide to American Pol … | Continue reading
With the supply chain tangled, we have what may be a brief moment to consider its flaws without being blinded by the glare of its surface efficiencies. | Continue reading
The virus has given us many headaches, but it is also giving us an opportunity as we re-evaluate policies and practices and seek to care for one another and for our students. | Continue reading
Gehrz traces the life of a fascinating individual, but in the process he raises important moral questions about which story of transcendence we seek to pursue. | Continue reading
“All Mod Cons.” Bill Kauffman commends the legacy of Senator Mark Hatfield: “A radical dispersal of power may lack the bellicose appeal of strident nationalism, but those who support fortifying the nation-state at the expense of its towns and cities and neighborhoods should remem … | Continue reading
The question, of course, is not whether some Protestant individuals have under-developed aesthetic sensibilities; the question is whether Protestant principles logically or consistently contribute to an under-developed aesthetic sensibility. | Continue reading
Alex Sosler compares online and in-person education. Paradoxically, when we embrace the limits of our embodied existence and learn with and from particular classmates in a particular place from a particular teacher, affections develop. Imagination stirs. | Continue reading
My guest is author and bookman Stuart Kells of Melbourne, Australia. Stuart and I chat about various things bookish—private presses, pulp paperbacks, typefaces, and university presses. We even talk about two of his books a bit, The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders and Shakespeare’ … | Continue reading
Emily Wenneborg reviews You are Not Your Own, by Alan Noble. Noble confronts the lie of autonomy that shapes Western society and counsels radical dependence on God’s grace. | Continue reading
“Land, Limits and the Scandal of Reparations.” Allan Carlson lays out the long and tragic history that has dispossessed so many American farmers—and particularly black ones—of the land. He concludes with some promising policy suggestions. Carlson’s proposals are too sane to be en … | Continue reading
We have confirmed reports that copies of the fall issue of Local Culture are now showing up in mailboxes around the country. Depending on the vicissitudes of the USPS, yours might arrive any day. If you haven’t subscribed and want the delight of receiving the next issue, you can … | Continue reading
How might we discern the truth in a mad time? Wendell Berry and G.K. Chesterton offer some wisdom. | Continue reading
By holding up the life of Muhammad Ali, Ken Burns seems to be asking us pressing questions: can we maintain our principles and move from outspoken and oppositional to loving and virtuous? Will we use our beauty and gifts not to belittle others but to better them? | Continue reading
As Earth Without Water got me thinking about the mystery of seeds, the mystery of faith, and the mystery of Divine action in the world. The novel is not about farmers, or even about the literal planting of seeds. Instead, it is about two painters and sometimes lovers and the germ … | Continue reading
“A Case for the Porch.” Charlie Hailey writes in praise of the porch. Many of his reflections resonate with Patrick Deneen’s early essay on the name “Front Porch Republic.” “‘Biopolitics’ Are Unavoidable.” Matthew Loftus turns to Wendell Berry for a properly expansive understandi … | Continue reading
Henry George reviews A World After Liberalism, by Matthew Rose. | Continue reading
Education in the age of COVID is an opportunity for teachers and students to investigate the role of language in an intense real-world situation. Rachel Griffis considers the prevalence of analogies and the deeply troubling ways that irresponsible and unethical language is destro … | Continue reading
“On Not Knowing Esperanto.” Peter Mommsen introduces the new issue of Plough. It’s a great introduction, and while I haven’t read the full issue yet, it looks to be another good one. “What Makes Moby-Dick a Great American Novel?” On October 5th, Andrew Delbanco, Robert K. Wallace … | Continue reading