The Commonweal Podcast

Dominic Preziosi and John Gehring wrap-up November's US Bishop's meetings in Baltimore. Our literary columnist Anthony Domestico interviews poet Katie Ford about her new collection If You Have to Go. Dominic Preziosi chats with longtime New York Times writer Dan Barry about his collection of reported essays, This Land. And senior editor Matthew Boudway moderates an exchange on cultural appropriati...

Meghan O'Gieblyn is the author of Interior States, a new collection of essays on topics like living in what some call "flyover country," contemporary Christian music, and the concept of "hell" and how it is marketed to the masses. Her collection is being hailed by writers such as Lorrie Moore and Daphne Merken; here, Meghan talks about her work and background with managing editor Katherine Lucky. 

Emily Ruskovich's debut novel Idaho received wide acclaim in 2017, named a New York Times Editor's Choice Book and The Idaho Book of the Year. Here, she talks with Commonweal contributor Tony Domestico, who described Idaho as "a wondrous novel about the enchanting and terrifying wonders of experience: unexplained and unexplainable actions, the ways in which love can pivot to hate and back again, t...

This episode features a conversation between Meghan O'Gieblyn and Katherine Lucky, a pair of young writers whose essays on the life of faith are already receiving acclaim. Editor Dominic Preziosi and Assistant Editor Griffin Oleynick discuss his coverage from the 2018 Synod on Young People at the Vatican. Contributor Anthony Domestico talks to Emily Ruskovich about her 2017 debut novel. And Derek...

Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi talks with managing editor Katherine Lucky about the power of female rage in this political moment.

Staffers Griffin Oleynick, Nicole-Ann Lobo, and Meaghan Ritchey chat about the recently closed David Wojnarowicz retrospective at The Whitney Museum. Wojnarowicz was a multi-media artist working in NYC from the 1970s through 1992 when he died of AIDS-related complications. According to the exhibition's catalog, his work "documents and illuminates a desperate period of American history...his rightf...

Julian Revie is a composer of sacred at St. Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel at Yale University. His Composition "Kyrie"—which you can hear in the segment— won the Francesco Siciliani Prize in 2016. In this segment, you'll hear him and assistant editor Griffin Oleynick discuss the process of musical composition, sacred art-making as a vocation, and even the theology behind "Kyrie," the musical set...

Senior editor Matthew Boudway and Dr. Alan Jacobs discuss Jacobs' new book The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, in which he recounts how thinkers like Jacques Maritain, T.S. Eliot, Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis, and W.H. Auden understood that their soon-to-be victorious nations weren't culturally or morally prepared for their power and success. Their work sought to articula...

Contributing Editor Paul Moses speaks with Donald Kerwin, the Director of the Center for Migration Studies, about the Trump administration's immigration policies. Moses and Kerwin reflect on these policies in light of Catholic teaching, contextualizing the Holy Family as a refugee family with migrant histories in scripture. 

The editors discuss their editorial "Injudicious," on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, subsequent Senate Judiciary hearings with Dr. Ford, and Kavanaugh's conduct therein. 

In our third episode, the editors of Commonweal discuss Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and the subsequent hearing with Dr. Blasey Ford. Contributing writer Paul Moses chats about U.S. immigration policy with Donald Kerwin, Director of the Center for Migration Studies. Senior editor Matthew Boudway and Alan Jacobs discuss his new book, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanis...

In our second installment, the Commonweal staff discusses the shape of future podcasts. Matthew Boudway talks with theologian Paul J. Griffiths about Roger Scruton’s latest book and Brexit. Griffin Oleynick sits down with Christine Emba to talk about the issues raised in "A Moral Economy—Faith and the Free Market in an Age of Inequality," a conversation between Cardinal Tobin and Jeffrey Sachs. An...

Matthew Sitman interviews Cole Stangler about the recent state of French politics, and what it might suggest about the American political situation.

Griffin Oleynick interviews Christine Emba of the Washington Post about ethics and economics in light of Catholic moral and social teachings.

Matthew Boudway interviews Paul Griffiths about his recent review of Roger Scruton's Where We Are: The State of Britain Now.

Commonweal editors Dominic Preziosi, Matthew Sitman, and Griffin Oleynick speak with Executive Producer Meaghan Ritchey about this new project - why we're doing it, and what we hope the experience will be for you, our listeners.

In our pilot episode, editor Dominic Preziosi interviews Massimo Faggioli and Kathleen Sprows Cummings about recent developments in the sex-abuse crisis, Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell discuss Jonah Goldberg's book Suicide of the West, Anthony Domestico interviews Micheal O'Siadhail about his book The Five Quintets, and several Commonweal staff discuss the recent Alberto Giacometti exhibit at T...

Commonweal staffers discuss the work of Alberto Giacometti, who was recently the subject of a major show at the Guggenheim Museum.

Anthony Domestico interviews poet Michael O'Siadhail, whose book The Five Quintets was published by Baylor University Press in 2018. 

Associate Editor Matthew Sitman interviews Sam Adler-Bell, Senior Policy Associate at the Century Foundation, about Jonah Goldberg's Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.

Editor Dominic Preziosi chats with Commonweal contributor and Villanova Prof. Massimo Faggioli about the controversy raised by the "testimony" of former Nuncio Carlo Mario Viganò and why Francis's response to his allegations is, perhaps, the right one.

Editor Dominic Preziosi talks with Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame, about revelations of sexual abuse and cover-up in six Pennsylvania dioceses and what meaningful reform would require.