Miłosz, Butz, and Han

Eric Miller pens a beautiful review of Wendell Berry’s new novel and reflects on the stories and structures that hold sustaining cultures in place. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 2 days ago

A Movement: Citizen Humanities?

The term "citizen humanities" argues for the complementary nature of work by academics and non-academics. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 3 days ago

The Stuff of Life

A whole-hog way of seeing. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 4 days ago

Pagans and Prophets: Nadya Williams on the Wisdom of the Ancients

Williams gives readers who may be either loosely familiar with or even quite ignorant of the authors she treats a brief introduction to their importance and what beauty can be found in each of them. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 5 days ago

Contra Machinam: An Appeal for an AI Resistance

Tradeoffs we should not be willing to tolerate. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 6 days ago

Put a Candle in the Window: Songs About the Light

Just as the light becomes a little more precious and scarce this year, we’re going to listen to songs about it. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 7 days ago

Large Language Models and the New Scholasticism

In trying to systematize relationships between words and humans, both medieval scholasticism and today’s automated dialogue sterilize the sources of human vitality. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 7 days ago

Consciousness, Typewriters, and Beef

Christian Wiman’s latest masterpiece is a must-read. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 9 days ago

Everything Was Once a Place

Practices that began as bounded places we visited have thinned into atmospheres we inhabit. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 10 days ago

Passage to Joy: The Use of Poetry

There is nothing greater in which to delight and nothing vaster in terms of the scope of His Being or understanding than God. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 11 days ago

Russell Moore on how Wendell Berry Made the Cover of CT

The former editor in chief of Christianity Today stops by to talk about his love of Port William and the AI infused world to come. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 12 days ago

Those Who Sow in Tears

Hicks's voice is that of a mature seeker, a seeker of hidden beauties and of home in a variety of places. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 12 days ago

Architecture As Messaging

The endurance of the building itself reinforces implicit messages that foster good character. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 13 days ago

To Assure, Not Persuade: A Review of Why Christians Should be Leftists

When does religious activity become characteristically “leftist?" | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 14 days ago

My Heart Has Been Outgrown: Songs About Change

This week, in lieu of a Thanksgiving episode, A Symposium of Popular Songs is listening to songs about change. Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 14 days ago

Literacy, Roux, and Tobacco

Kit Wilson describes how the flurry of words that bombarded him via podcasts, social media, and texts cut him off from reality. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 16 days ago

The Theological Problem of the “Choosy Womb”, Part 2: Hospitality in a Botanical Paradigm

The botanical paradigm enables me to better live with uncertainty. It enables me to avoid throwing the choosy female body under the bus. It lets me view my complex embodiment more tenderly, and it helps that bitter evolutionary pill go down a little easier. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 17 days ago

In Norman Maclean’s Life, There Was No Clear Line between Beauty and Tragedy

McCarthy's biography of Norman Maclean is a splendid addition for the Macleanophile. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 18 days ago

The World Beneath the Couch Cushions

An invisible world. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 19 days ago

Leisure and Infinite Games

An infinite game must be not only intrinsically worthwhile but also sustainable, and that indefinitely. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 20 days ago

If I Could Only Fly: Songs About Transcendence

We’re talking about transcendence this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and it’s coming from every direction: religion, drugs, death, and all the rest. Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 21 days ago

Inside the Workings of Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape our Future

The world of books is tacitly conceived of as a homey yet elevated sphere analogous perhaps to Tolkien’s Shire. How did books become what Joel Miller calls “the forgotten technology”? | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 21 days ago

Crypto, Abundance, and Robots

Robert Wyllie writes about Kirk’s assassination and the state of hyperpolitics with the appropriate self-awareness, despair, and hope. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 23 days ago

The Theological Problem of the “Choosy Womb”, Part 1: An Honest Look at Spontaneous Abortion

How should we morally evaluate or rank the various choices we make that lead to embryo death? | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 24 days ago

What the Small City Can Do

What has Ezra Pound to offer to the citizens of the Front Porch Republic? | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 25 days ago

Old Warnings for New Possibilities

What made the Isle of Pines an instance of regression is being sold to us as progress | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 26 days ago

Kill the (Robo) Ump!

As I unburdened myself of mask and chest protector I swore I would never again gainsay a ruling, no matter how dubious, of the fellow behind the plate ... | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 27 days ago

An Echo of a World I Knew So Long Ago: Songs About Memory

We’re talking about memory this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs. How much do we need to remember in order to think, and how much do we need to forget? Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 28 days ago

Leisure in an Age of Technology

Leisure is not entertainment, play, or a chance to catch your breath in order to return to work restored. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 28 days ago

Bookstores, Hammers, and Soybeans

Chase Steely visit’s Elder’s Bookstore in Nashville and muses on the literary and cultural traditions born in that city. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Building an Agrarian Localist Present: A Review of Finding Lights in a Dark Age

A vision of the future. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

We Need Community, Not Tariffs

The national dialogue has myopically focused on bringing back manufacturing jobs, which misses the point that the real goal should be stable communities. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

The Trail of Feathers by the Sugar River

Out here the road doesn’t speak theory—it breathes. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Escaping the Matrix: A Review of Are We All Cyborgs Now?

Phillips and Pauling help us to consider new emerging technologies and how we can avoid becoming cyborgs living off grubs and gruel. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Not Roaring but Weeping: Songs About Crying

We’re listening to songs about crying this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and there are so many of them that I’m only playing artists I’ve never played on the show before. Send me your song recommendations at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

In Praise of the Earth: A Review

Han turns so completely toward wholeness that his writing seems an alien arrival ... Writing, perhaps, not even to be read but simply to praise ... | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

McGuane, MAHA, and DoorDash

Charles McNamara wrestles with how we might regain the virtues needed for real education. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

A Place to Stand: The Aims of Teaching, The Good of the Canon, and The Great Gatsby at 100

The real work of judgment makes possible stability and repair, a work worth even one’s death, or, what may prove more difficult, a lifetime of obscure fidelity. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Brad Littlejohn on Freedom and Big Tech

Brad Littlejohn’s recent book offers wise guidance for navigating our way through these times of rapid change. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Rights Without Responsibilities?

Many are quick to posit that we have a wide range of rights, yet we are almost tongue-tied about our responsibilities. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

The Monster and the Mirage

Technology may assist the surgeon, illuminate the astronomer’s field, or console a mother in her sorrow. Yet it cannot give the soul the perfection it longs for. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Don’t the Last Time Come Too Soon?: Break-Up Songs

Inspired by absolutely nothing in my personal life, we’re listening to break-up songs this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs. I’ll try not to make it too depressing! Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Following Dante

At its best, Krause’s writing reminds us that poetry is not a luxury but a vital mode of human knowing, one that can re-enchant our disenchanted age and direct us once again toward the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Populism, Substack, and Education

In a searing essay, Alvaro M. Bedoya, a former FTC commissioner, describes how he came to embrace populism. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Education in a Different Story

We must begin to see and name how deeply the modern higher education industry subverts the very nature of embodied, placed, limited humans. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

The Commons in a Cardboard Box

A box by a door. A hand that picks up. A name that calls an object to account. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

In Praise of the Humble Notebook

Practicing the discipline of attention | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago

Relics of the Fleeting Past

A room once filled with my son and his belongings was mostly empty. It wasn’t the absence of his stuff that hurt; it was his absence. But as I ran my fingers over his bookshelf, still full with the books of his childhood, I was grateful. | Continue reading


@frontporchrepublic.com | 1 month ago