Another Life with Joy Marie Clarkson

Peter and Susannah welcome Kim Comer, the editor of Plough’s European edition, and discuss the origins of the new Bruderhof communities in Austria. Welcomed by Cardinal Schönborn as part of the healing of the schisms of the Reformation, these communities are thriving. This leads them to the question of how past wrongs can be healed in general: how can we get past the “sins of the fathers?” Not by...

Peter and Susannah talk with demographer Lyman Stone about falling birthrates and what humans need to thrive enough to have children. They discuss Thomas Malthus and the origin of the European demographic transition, as well as the origin of overpopulation fears, and about how those fears misunderstand the nature of human ingenuity. They cover the essential racism of so much “overpopulation” disco...

Peter and Susannah speak with Eleanor Parker about Archbishop Wulfstan and his sermon in 1014 calling the English to return to fidelity with God and each other, in the face of the apocalyptic Viking invasions. They also discuss what happened after those invasions succeeded: Wulfstan worked with the new king, Cnut, to draft just laws for this new Viking-Anglo Saxon polity. Then, Peter and Susannah...

Susannah and Peter discuss Peter’s lead editorial, “Hoping for Doomsday,” and cover some of the mysteries at the heart of Apocalypse: is it the end of the world? Why is it hopeful? What does it mean? What does it take to allow the supernatural hope of the New Heavens and the New Earth give your life meaning now, and what’s going on with Christians’ addiction to apocalyptic date-setting? Then they...

Joseph Julián González and Monique González write that for the ancient Nahua and Aztec poets, the way to the holy runs through beauty. Read the article.

Dhananjay Jagannathan writes on good and bad music, morals, and why the sheer vitality of music can seem to spell danger. Read the article.

Composer Steven Michael Newby says African American spirituals aren’t just for Black churches. They are for everybody. Read the article.

Joseph M. Keegin explores Christian Hardcore music and its undoing. Read the article.

In this article drawn from her memoir With or Without Me, Esther Maria Magnis tells how her prayers were not answered when her father got cancer. Or were they? Read the article.

Benjamin Crosby on how hymn singing can help revive a culture of communal music. Read the article.

Phil Christman finds community and catharsis in the YouTube comments to Joy Division and other post punk and new wave music. Read the article.

Peter Mommsen on how singing and making (not just listening to) music shapes the soul. Read the article.

Mary Townsend on how the excellence of Dolly Parton helps her students understand Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics. Read the article.

In this excerpt from his novel Brisbane, Eugene Vodolazkin’s character Gleb Yanovsky quits music school because “we’re all going to die.” Read the article.

When our amateur choir sings Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, the music’s power overwhelms our mistakes.

Peter and Susannah talk with friend of the pod Zena Hitz, author of Lost in Thought, about the state of the liberal arts, how those not in academia can continue their humanist education, and the Catherine Project, her new organization dedicated to helping people do this. What is the value of the “great books?” Why these books and not others? How do we read closely, and why is it important to do th...

Peter and Susannah talk with Joey Keegin and Phil Christman about their pieces on Christian hardcore and ’80s, ’90s post-punk respectively. The blend of nostalgia and genuine appreciation makes for a powerful and enthusiastic back and forth between the two guests, with Pete chiming in and Susannah remaining respectfully silent. They discuss what makes derivative Christian music bad, and how some C...

Peter and Susannah have a long, polyphonic conversation with Rowan Williams about his new collection of plays, Shakeshafte and Other Plays; about a Christianity that can accommodate the whole of the world; about the poet David Jones, the artist Eric Gill, and the destructiveness of aesthetic fundamentalism. Then they turn to a discussion of the war, and of the role of art in a time of war. The arc...

Peter and Susannah speak with Esther Maria Magnis about her recent Plough release With or Without Me, a memoir of her father’s death from cancer and her own loss and gain of Christian faith. How can a shattered faith be rebuilt after tragedy? Then, they have a wide-ranging conversation with Sperello di Serego Alighieri, Dante’s descendant, about his book on his ancestor’s cosmology, The Sun and th...

Edwidge Danticat on the way mass shootings have made violent death seem normal, and how to resist it. Read the article.

Peter and Susannah chat with Brittany Petruzzi about her interview with Susannah in the current issue of the magazine, Chanting Psalms In the Dark. During the past year, Brittany went permanently blind as the result of a brain tumor, and in the midst of that diagnosis, she started a psalm-chanting YouTube channel. Inspired by her love of and need for God’s word as well as her musical theater backg...

Peter and Susannah open the Music issue podcast series with a discussion of Anabaptist music: the beautiful and occasionally grim songs of the Radical Reformation. But what is music for anyway? They talk about music as a crucial aspect of the human Telos, and the need for the body of Christ to worship Him in song. The sheer power of music has been recognized in all the philosophical traditions of...

Russian novelist Eugene Vodolazkin finds the ludicrous and the heartening even in the funeral of his own father. Read the article here.

Kelsey Osgood on looking for Jewish community, still finding that her family is set apart, and wondering how much to let the world in. Read it here.

What’s it like to raise a child with profound physical disabilities? Six mothers around the world talk about the hard days... and the amazing ones. Read the article.