Another Life with Joy Marie Clarkson

Timothy J. Keiderling reflects from Israel on the teachings of Jesus and who are the enemies we should love.

Peter and Susannah talk with Dr. William Cavanaugh about his book Being Consumed. What is the nature of the consumer economy? That’s what this short book seeks to explore. William Cavanaugh discusses his argument with the hosts, asking questions such as: When is a market free? Is our problem that we are too attached to consumer products? Should we be aiming at a local economy? Do we live in a worl...

Robert Lockridge and his family share their homegrown food with the people who live in their urban neighborhood, whether or not they can afford it.

Phil Christman has a Tradcath, an exvangelical influencer, a mainliner, and a conservative megachurch pastor star in this retelling of Luke 10:30–37.

Tara Isabella Burton comes on the pod to ask, How did we become a world of self-makers? Susannah, Pete and Tara discuss her new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. What were the intellectual and imaginative and social currents that led us from a world where the self was something given or discovered to one in which it was made? What is the role of America’s G...

Maria Weiss finds pain and friendship in the enforced community of outcasts at a Paraguayan leper colony.

Zito Madu describes how his parents’ insistence on reserving an entire room in their small house for books expanded his world.

Leah and Susannah grill Fredrik deBoer on the state of leftist politics. What happened in 2020 and why have things not changed more? How does a self-described leftist perceive the stakes and priorities of America’s political divide? What happens when labor power is no longer at the center of leftist politics? They then discuss his 2020 book The Cult of Smart, and Leah presses him on where he deriv...

Maureen Swinger describes what it is like to live in a Bruderhof community where you possess nothing but share everything.

As the Industrial Revolution took off, writes Jack Bell, William Cobbett rose in defense of the cottage economy.

Hannah Long, Leah Libresco Sargeant, Alastair Roberts, and Susannah Black Roberts discuss the Barbie Movie. Does it have a moral? What is Gerwig trying to say about feminism, men and women, capitalism, and so on? Is it a confused mess or deeply insightful? The primary problem that the movie is designed to critique is the deeply unsatisfying nature of contemporary masculinity and femininity, and th...

Clare Coffey says that in multilevel marketing, friendship is not the means to the sell – it is the thing being sold.

The PloughCast team talks with a philosopher and cultural commentator about money. David Bentley Hart reflects on how his experience translating the New Testament impacted his understanding of Jesus’ teaching on mammon. How are we supposed to live out these extreme and demanding teachings? What is the role of Proverbs-style Old Testament prudence in the life of a New Testament disciple? They also...

The first chapter of Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island, the chronicle of an island from medieval to modern times.

The PloughCast team talk with Paul Kingsnorth about artificial intelligence and demons. Kingsnorth, an environmental activist, novelist, former Wiccan priest, and recent Christian convert, joins Susannah, Madoc, and Alan to talk about the eternal temptations represented by technological society. How has his recent conversion changed the way he experiences the world? What insights from his earlier...

In this excerpt from his book Salt and Light, Eberhard Arnold writes that God and money are enemies. We must choose one or the other.

Clare Coffey and Dan Walden discuss influencer culture, MLMs, and the monetization of friendship. They also go entirely off script and end up in so many different rabbit trails that it is frankly difficult to write a podcast description that even begins to reflect the reality here. Among the topics covered: Whether Blackwater is kind of a MLM for guys, whether Clare is willing to take CIA money to...

Sharon Rose Christner speaks with Anna, a woman who lives in a former Roman palazzo that has been converted into a homeless shelter.

Alastair, a biblical theologian and Susannah’s husband, examines the story of Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Jesus’ feet before Holy Week as a powerful image of what our relationship with money in the Kingdom ought to be. It’s not that prudence and careful management are bad things. They are very good. But overflowing generosity, the Christian version of the Classical virtue of magnificence, is th...

This issue's forerunner profiles Hudson Taylor, an early missionary to China.

The Good Samaritan and the effective Altruist meet in the retelling of Luke 10:30–37. The movement that most recently hit the headlines with the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried deserves a more sympathetic treatment than it had on the last PloughCast we covered it on. What are its tenets, and how does it work as an ethical system? Leah, who considers herself an effective altruist, leads Phil, Susanna...

Peter Mommsen tells the story of Pinianus and Melania, a wealthy fifth-century couple who gave it all away.

Alastair Roberts discusses the virtue of magnificence, the relationship between money and love, and what we can learn from Mary of Bethany’s gift.

Eugene McCarraher and Peter Mommsen speak about why Modern capitalism is anything but secular. They discuss Christianity’s compromise with mammon – and the visionaries who have resisted it. Then they talk about the power of mammon, whether it’s enchanted, and the reason we venerate it.

A new faith proclaimed one man's agonizing death as history's turning point — and utterly changed the meaning of suffering.