The Commonweal Podcast

Vaccines have encountered resistance ever since they were invented in the late eighteenth century.  But vaccine skepticism has never been as vocal—or as widespread—as it has become in the United States in recent years. Much of that has to do with the policies of the Trump administration, in particular Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose drastic changes at the CDC...

Even as Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet across the country, voters in the deep-red state of Wyoming, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than six to one, remain solidly in support of the president. So it took real courage for Bishop Steven Biegler—appointed by Pope Francis in 2017 to lead the Diocese of Cheyenne, encompassing all of Wyoming—to promulgate a...

Following the 1989 parish closures, the infrastructure that had supported Black Catholic leadership in Detroit was largely dismantled. Surviving parishes tried to rebuild community, while parishes that were merged struggled to forge new identities. Meanwhile, Cardinal Edmund Szoka, the archbishop who oversaw the closures, left the city for Rome to take a top Vatican finance post.  In the third and...

In September 1988, Cardinal Edmund Szoka, the archbishop of Detroit, announced via a closed-circuit television broadcast that the archdiocese would close dozens of inner-city parishes in Detroit within a year. Churches on the city’s predominantly Black east side would be disproportionately affected.  The announcement triggered an immediate outcry: parishioners met at Sacred Heart, Detroit's Black...

What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope? These questions, originally formulated by philosopher Immanuel Kant, are some of the most essential ones that we ask. Attempting to answer them can take a lifetime, if we can answer them at all. On this episode, we’re featuring an interview with Christopher Beha, the novelist and former editor of Harper’s Magazine whose new book, Why I Am Not an At...

In the first episode of Commonweal's new podcast series, The City and the Cross, host and inaugural Centennial Fellow Aaron Robertson traces the origins and flowering of Black Catholic Detroit throughout the twentieth century—from the era of Jim Crow, when Black Catholics were regularly excluded from white parishes, through the 1960s and 1970s, when the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Co...

In Commonweal's first narrative podcast series, inaugural Centennial Fellow Aaron Robertson chronicles the rise, erosion, and defiant survival of Black Catholic Detroit—a community that led its own spiritual renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s only to watch the institutional Church fail to sustain it over subsequent decades.  The three-part series premieres Wednesday, June 10.

For as long as humans have been able to write, they’ve made maps.  Sometimes maps show paths to the sacred. More often, they depict borders and boundaries, becoming tools of exclusion and control.  Not so for Sandy Rodriguez, a third-generation Chicana artist based in Los Angeles.  Her work, made with traditional indigenous paper and pigments, offers a pointed alternative to the map of the United...

As bad as things have gotten for democracy in America, it no longer suffices to simply denounce those in power. Nor is it enough to march, call members of Congress, or vote, important though all of those things are. Instead we have to find new ways of building power—a process that begins with grassroots community organizing. But what exactly does that look like?  On this episode, Commonweal Missio...

Catholics have been thinking about vocations for a long time—and not only in terms of becoming a priest or member of a religious order. The Church teaches that every person is called by God to do something particular, to play some unique role in the ongoing creation and salvation of the world.  But what happens when our working lives don't align with our true vocations? What should we do when we f...

Too many of us spend too much time on our phones.  We know by now—through whistleblower reports, congressional hearings, and our daily lived experience—that these devices, neutral in themselves, can and often do cause serious harm.  Can we learn to live without them again? Would we even want to?  On this episode, D. Graham Burnett, a professor of the history of science at Princeton and co-author,...

When he was missioned to Beirut last fall, Fr. Doug Jones, a recently ordained Jesuit priest, expected to spend his time conducting research and administering sacraments.  But since the beginning of Israel’s war with Hezbollah on March 2, Fr. Jones finds himself scanning social media for air strike warnings and handing out towels to migrants and other displaced people living in his parish church. ...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with Gary Dorrien, professor at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, about the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson and the Black social gospel tradition. They explore Dorrien's own intellectual journey from rural Michigan to the academy, his groundbreaking trilogy on the Black social gospel, Jackson's relati...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with Jonathan Sheehan, professor of European history at UC Berkeley, about his new book, On the Altar: A History of Sacrifice from the Sacred to the Secular (Princeton University Press). Together, they explore the long, contested history of Christian sacrifice, from the early church and the cult of the martyrs through t...

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with reporter Daniel Silliman about his tenure at Christianity Today, his bombshell reporting on Ravi Zacharias, the current state of Evangelicals—and more. Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor discuss Spellbound : How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump with author Molly Worthen, professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor introduce the podcast and discuss the book Christianity's American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular by David Hollinger, the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Editor Dominic Preziosi updates listeners of The Commonweal Podcast.

A central tenet of the MAGA movement is the Trump administration's "America First" foreign-policy agenda. To fulfill this agenda, it has slashed foreign aid, launched a trade war with the United States’ most reliable trading partners, and threatened to abandon NATO and our most trusted allies.  Informed by Trump’s transactional approach to international relations, such actions flout the existing l...

A little more than eight months into the second Trump presidency, many Americans today find the United States increasingly unrecognizable: a volatile and inflationary economy, rising political violence, and brazen corruption at all levels of government don’t appear to be going away anytime soon. So how did we get here? What lessons can we learn from the histories of other countries, especially one...

One of the most prominent features of the second Trump administration has been its bluntly racist actions and policymaking.  Recent examples abound, from the suspension of asylum for migrants and refugees, the all-out war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in federal agencies and higher education, and the ongoing and increasingly militarized efforts at mass deportation, which have terror...

Since becoming pope, Leo XIV has reminded us that the Catholic Church “offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching.” That tradition is especially salient now, amid the rise of Christian nationalism and of alternative interpretations of Catholicism among some high-profile  politicians in the United States. As we confront the political, social, and spiritual challenges brought on by the s...

For decades, public support for the death penalty in the United States has been declining. But in recent years, the number of executions has risen sharply—and a majority of Americans still say they support capital punishment. What’s needed, argues Atlantic staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig, is not just a deeper understanding of forgiveness, but the actual practice of mercy. Bruenig has written extens...

It’s often remarked that America has become less religious, especially during recent decades. But what if that religiosity hasn’t disappeared, but just taken less visible forms? That’s exactly what was happening in the arts in 1980s NYC, argues Paul Elie, author of The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s.  As Elie tells it, the era wasn’t just marked by the ascendance of the...

The swift elevation to the papacy of Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost—known simply as ‘Bob’ among his fellow Augustinian friars—defied pundits’ predictions even as it was met with joy by Catholics around the world.  It’s impossible to say just how Leo XIV’s papacy will unfold, though in his early Masses and remarks the pope has already voiced strong support for the continuation of Fran...