New Things Podcast

Did you choose college — or did you just go? For most of us, college was never really a decision. It was the next thing on the list. Junior year: SAT. Senior year: applications. Nobody ever stopped to ask should you go — just where are you going. But it wasn't always this way. For most of American history, college was rare, deliberate, and built around a very specific purpose. So how did we ge...

Are you Catholic — or just American? Before you skip this one, hear me out. This episode is not here to make you feel like a bad Catholic. It is not an attack on America — I am American too, and proud of it. But there is a question worth sitting with: has the way you practice your faith been shaped more by growing up in America than by growing up Catholic? In this episode of New Things, we trace t...

The most powerful document written on AI this year did not come from Silicon Valley. It came from Rome. On May 15th, 2026 — the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum — Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas. I have spent three years studying exactly the tradition this encyclical comes from. I still was not prepared for what is inside it. In this episode Meg breaks down five things most people are...

My entire life as a Catholic I have been on the defensive. Defending my faith at the dinner table. Defending my beliefs at work. Defending the Church in a culture that treats these values as either irrelevant or outdated. Then I had a lightbulb moment. Being Catholic is not something to apologize for. When you look into the Catholic tradition you do not find people standing in corners. You find th...