The holiness of the world: that is the heart of the matter. The doors of perception must be cleansed to see the holiness again. | Continue reading
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening mostly to songs about men picking up, or trying to pick up, women—though there are two songs that reverse that pattern. Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
It may be time for willing churches to begin devoting more resources to the active pursuit of remaining human. | Continue reading
Brian Miller cuts hay in the same field he’s been mowing for twenty-six years. | Continue reading
Both global solidarity and local subsidiarity are needed if we are to address the emerging technology of so-called AI in sane and humane ways. | Continue reading
This desire to reduce liberalism to economic liberalism is taken to its extreme in the dark enlightenment. | Continue reading
Responsibilities—actions, decisions, discussions—should be exercised at the level closest to the individual and only move “upward” if necessary. | Continue reading
Well, what would the Amish do, I wondered? | Continue reading
Magnifica Humanitas encourages us to not give up on changing the world | Continue reading
For a while, the episode risked becoming an episode on unreliable narrators—but really we’re talking about obsession, a subject I suspect we all know something about. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Shawn Regan describes the manifold benefits the Great Salt Lake provides and the cross-partisan effort to replenish it. | Continue reading
At the heart of CST is the title of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical: magnificent humanity | Continue reading
AI may be perceived as an “immaterial” technology, but it totally depends on data centers that have intense physical demands. | Continue reading
Sometimes I’ll sit still for, say, an hour, and imagine all the people around the world who have embraced me, shook my hand, kissed my cheek. | Continue reading
The hydra we face is not only hard to defeat; it’s hard to define. | Continue reading
We’re approaching the ocean from fourteen different directions on this week’s A Symposium of Popular Songs, featuring, for whatever reason, some very long songs (as well as a few short ones). Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Sometimes, God does not simply give or withhold. Sometimes He rearranges who belongs where. | Continue reading
Peter Mommsen articulates the real good that small magazines can accomplish. | Continue reading
The loving entanglement that defies our culture’s idol of autonomy is available to men just as much as it is to women, though differently. | Continue reading
I cannot imagine a better metaphor for, and a better invitation to, the forming and renewing of cultural connections and communities than bookish places. | Continue reading
What if our galactic neighbors have never come for a visit because they simply feel quite at home in their little corner of the universe? | Continue reading
Buchanan’s fusion of Catholic subsidiarity and anti-globalism reveals the enduring fractures within the Religious Right that still shape today’s populist divides. | Continue reading
My father was the pastor, and he was not above reprimanding his children from the pulpit if we didn’t sit very quietly. | Continue reading
We’re listening to songs about kissing this week. This is one of the perpetual themes of pop music, so I’m going to try to play only artists whom I’ve never played on this show before. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Adam Gustine articulates the value of an ordinary life doing ordinary work in an ordinary place. | Continue reading
We didn’t raise our children to keep them for ourselves. We raised them to go make a home, to share grace and love. | Continue reading
By heightening emotion, hatred deepens the personhood of both teachers and students. | Continue reading
The hardware store’s customers aren’t just customers. They aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are its neighbors. | Continue reading
Throughout the epistles, the apostles in both word and deed prioritize the care of widows and summarize it as "true religion." | Continue reading
No readings this week—just fifteen songs about landlines, and some musing on why there aren’t any great songs about cell phones. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Trump, in his crude way, is forcing us to confront the false stories we have told ourselves about who we are. | Continue reading
Roosevelt Montás articulates the effects reading has on individuals and societies. | Continue reading
There are problems that we do not have the luxury of waiting for lab-grown burgers to solve. | Continue reading
And then I noticed that she had a Children’s Hospital visitor sticker on her sweater and that, hardly before I finished my admonishment, she began to sob. | Continue reading
Hardship fades from memory with each generation. Those who lived it remember the weight of it. Those who didn’t often forget. | Continue reading
Generative ai systems, like drugs, impact cognition directly. | Continue reading
We start with some songs about faithful women this week before moving on to some more abstract examinations of constancy. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! | Continue reading
Are our first principles as Americans, as humans, as creatures, sifted and rightly laid down? | Continue reading
James Rebanks warns of the fragility of a food system that prioritizes efficiency above all else. | Continue reading
The saddest pair of words in the English language is the phrase never again. | Continue reading
“Relationships” between human beings and machines are not real relationships because machines cannot relate to the experience of living a human life. | Continue reading
To truly listen to locks requires the love of a locksmith. | Continue reading
When the scoreboard lit up at my son’s game yesterday, it felt like a small miracle. | Continue reading
To gaze into the eyes of a helpless baby was to see my actual condition as a creature laid bare. | Continue reading
It’s songs about salvation this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs—and not nearly as much Christian rock as I was afraid I’d play! Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com. | Continue reading
Nate Halverson has a level-headed and disturbing report on the use of glyphosate to manage US forests. | Continue reading
As one Kentuckian wondered, why would he give up the “glitz and glamour” elsewhere to come back home to farm? | Continue reading
Once, a very long time ago, man and woman lived in a garden and walked with God. | Continue reading