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This podcast is from ⁠⁠Plough Quarterly⁠⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Get Nature Poems to See By. This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from Plough Quarterly, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. Subscribe at our introductory rate to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read the transcript.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read the transcript.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read the transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read transcript here.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Read the transcript.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

In today's inaugural episode, Joy interviews Plough Editor-in-chief Peter Mommsen, and senior editor Maureen Swinger and her husband, Jason.

Read the transcript.

This podcast is from ⁠Plough Quarterly⁠, a magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action. ⁠Subscribe at our introductory rate⁠ to learn how another life is possible.

Then Helen describes what led her to write her book on the work of the farmer’s wife, and addresses mothers, who are often the ones making choices about food that are linked to questions of sustainable agriculture.

They discuss the concept of rewilding, and how that is not necessarily either possible or desirable – the landscape has not been wild for thousands of years – but that increasing complexity and biodiversity is both possible and necessary.

Why are metaphors important? How can they help us live well – and how can they go wrong? Why should we not think of ourselves as computers? And what does all this mean for our language about God?

In the discussion, Joy and Susannah range widely through topics including apophatic theology, the inevitability of metaphorical language, Owen Barfield, Anthroposophy, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Suzanne Simard’s research on how trees communicate via fungal networks, and much more.

Is J. R. R. Tolkien anti-technology? What is the relationship between magic and technology in the world of the Lord of the Rings, and in ours? What do the elves have to do with that? What can we tell by looking at the rings, the palantíri, the silmarils?

Should the Lord of the Rings be read as a straightforward critique of industrial society? How can the categories of mending and preservation be used to understand how the various heroes and heroines of Middle-earth go about shepherding this world into its next age, and how can those categories help us to do the same in our age?

Jesus expected his followers to know that he was going to have to die and would then be resurrected – but, famously, they didn’t figure it out until it happened. What were Jewish expectations of resurrection, and where is the idea found in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?

Alastair discusses the hints and implications found throughout the text, from metaphors which point to Israel’s return from exile as a kind of political resurrection, to more literal expectations of life beyond death.

He then discusses how we are to understand Christ’s resurrected body itself, and therefore ours: Saint Paul says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” and yet Jesus tells his disciples to notice that he has “flesh and bone.” What is a spiritual body? How did first century Jews think of flesh and spirit? And what can we expect?

The idea that the natural world is to be worshiped can take many forms. Douthat and Peter Mommsen and Susannah Black Roberts discuss these forms, ranging from Wordsworthian spiritual experiences in a national park, to worshiping ancestral or local gods, to civic religions of left and right, to tarot card reading, to affirming the Darwinian struggle for existence as a source of moral guidance.

 They discuss varying understandings of natural law, talk about euthanasia, and revisit Fight Club. Then they discuss whether Darwinism is compatible with the traditional idea of the Fall, and whether we should accept the teaching that human beings are made to not just live in harmony with the natural world but to transcend it.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson then discusses the history of the euthanasia movement, beginning in the late nineteenth century with its connection to eugenics, through its fall into disfavor subsequent to its association with Nazism, through its rise again in the 1970s. What are the different kinds of arguments that have been used, and how can we think about those arguments?

Raikin and Thomson then discuss the relationship between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, and Thomson discusses the particular vulnerability of disabled people to pressure to choose MAID.

They go on to discuss the topics of some of Nicolson’s books: Sissinghurst, the farm and garden owned by Nicolson’s grandmother, Vita Sackville-West; Homer; the pre-Socratic philosophers; and sailing. 

They go through the Rabbinic concept of Tikkun as equity, as a kind of emergency legal decree to be used when the law as written would lead to socially destructive outcomes. They discuss the mystery of how this legal concept became the contemporary vision of Tikkun olam as, essentially, a progressive vision of social justice.

Zohar gives a brief description of the development of Rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and relates it to the later development of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.

Then they discuss the progress of the idea of Tikkun olam through the Kabbalistic tradition, when Tikkun becomes an endeavor to repair the shattered world.

Both men have made their careers in political media and have made significant changes in their politics over the course of their lives – in Sohrab’s case, very publicly. These changes have affected some friendships and have left others intact.

Sohrab and Matt and Susannah discuss the phenomenon of friendship that transcends politics, how difficult that can be, how painful when it doesn’t work, but how good when it does.

They also discuss the social peculiarities of Left and Right, and challenge Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundationalism. They reflect on what Christianity must say to enmity and friendship, and end with an excursus on Dimes Square.

We don’t all agree on issues of religious and moral import – is there a way that we can nevertheless work together on things where we do agree, and can we provide protections for all organizations to live out their idea of the good life, and in particular their faith commitments, well?

Stephanie describes her approach to conversation and disagreement, and gives several case studies regarding the work that the CPJ has done over the past several years, most notably in light of the Dobbs decision.

Susannah and Stephanie also discuss what happens when you reach the limits of pluralism: is there room for actually seeking common justice, justice that we can all agree on despite our differing commitments?

Sohrab’s new book, Tyranny, Inc., is a thoroughly reported look at the way that private economic power, especially the conditions of employment, has taken away workers’ abilities to have agency over their own lives. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? Sohrab looks at the history of the last several hundred years, from the enclosure movement on, and looks as well at many stories of contemporary economic tyranny.

They discuss the tendency of conservative genealogies of social ills to focus on ideas to the exclusion of material forces, and discuss as well the connections between this book, Sohrab’s earlier work on liberalism, and his Catholic faith.

They end in discussing the conflict between neoliberalism and the Christian tradition, and Susannah recites a poem about a goose.

Clare didn’t grow up in the Bruderhof – she made the decision to join when she was in her early thirties, after a successful career. She describes her spiritual quest, and the doubts and worries that came with considering joining – and the freedom that she has felt since then.

Marianne is fourth-generation Bruderhof, has never had her own bank account, but the decision to join was no less personal and intense.

What these two women experience in their day-to-day lives, how they relate to work, to security, to each other, and to God, in this lifetime commitment, is the subject of this podcast.

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 world of scarcity?

Along the way they discuss Saint Augustine and stealing pears, Rene Girard, and whether an Anthropologie window display can point Susannah toward the kingdom of God.

They also discuss strategies for becoming more aware of the things we use, the production process, and the people who are producing them.

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 Gilded Age millionaires in this story, and how did their own vision of themselves as able to harness the energy of the economy and maybe of the Cosmos contribute to our current vision of the good life?

Finally, via many other rabbit trails, they discuss why you should not eat a bat, and speculate about Albrecht Dürer’s hypothetical hair care videos

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 derives his sense of the existential worth of each human being.

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 the poverty of the “Girlboss” as a model for female adulthood.

But what does it offer as an alternative? Is there a vision for a way forward for Ken as well as Barbie? And what does it imply about the disembodiment of contemporary life?

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 discuss why joining a community like the Bruderhof is not enough, and why the separation between private piety and political economy makes no sense. In a world where we are still waiting for the kingdom to finally come, how can we pursue living in that kingdom?

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 life and work have persisted, which ones have been transformed, and what is the relationship between the worship of Mammon and the dangers posed by AI?

They also discuss how to live well in the coming age, and the lessons to be drawn from the Desert Fathers.

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 write mean essays about Mary McCarthy for The Partisan Review (she is), the plight of the lumpen bohemian, and what it would take to make a really good American Iberico cured ham.

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 the most proper response to Christ’s own overflowing generosity.

They then discuss the life of the late Tim Keller as an example of this generous investment of time, talent and treasure in the kingdom.

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, Susannah, and Pete on a tour of Effective Altruism and its affiliated movements, including extreme long-termism and the mysterious world of the “postrats.”

Then they talk about the power of mammon, whether it’s enchanted, and the reason we venerate it.

They begin with the story of Pinianus and Melania, two married Roman patricians who gave away their enormous fortune in obedience to Christ’s commands. What was the world of the early church that would have made this seem like an appropriate thing to do?

And what did Saint Augustine say about it? They discuss his complex role in Christianity’s changing attitude to wealth. That attitude evolved to the point that eventually Max Weber could claim that Protestantism had been a major support in the development of capitalism itself.

How can we understand this teaching about wealth, and what is its relationship to our new status as sons and daughters of the King? They tease these ideas and some of the upcoming pieces and episodes.

From questions of academic vocation to Arthurian legend to tame bears to head transplantation, this novel is a rich exploration of what it means to be human in the face of a conspiracy against the human. It’s also one of Susannah and Marianne’s favorite novels.

The gang examines Lewis’s treatment of these themes, with many spoilers. They also solve, once and for all, the Jane Problem.

She focuses in particular on the story of Pastor Wang. A classical liberal human rights lawyer, he converted as an adult in 2005 and eventually became the pastor of one of the largest and most public of China’s illegal protestant churches. Arrested in 2018, he is now serving a nine-year prison sentence.

She discusses his intellectual influences, from Luther and Calvin to Kuyper and Van Til, and traces the development of his thought, from an earlier rights-based approach to his current understanding of the church’s role as free by definition, whether or not it has civil freedoms.

She also discusses the impact of the Covid lockdowns on the house churches, their scrupulous following of lockdown regulations combined with their absolute refusal to stop meeting for any non-Covid related reason.

Finally, she, Susannah and Peter discuss the lessons that such persecution has to offer the Western church.

James Mumford tells his own story of the philosophical inadequacy of much contemporary therapy, and asks: What if some of the philosophical presuppositions of materialist therapy actually end up making depression worse? Could it be that depression can be exacerbated by bad philosophy? And if so, how can we bring moral realism into our therapies in order to address the problem where it lies?

Peter, Susannah, and James then discuss recent findings about the effect of politics on mental illness. Recent studies have showed that young liberals have much worse mental health, in general, than young conservatives. They consider Jonathan Haidt’s proposed explanation of this phenomenon: that certain approaches to progressive politics encourage people to adopt disempowering and destructive habits of mind.

Finally, they consider the way that a holistic understanding of a person, as body, soul or mind, and spirit, can offer hints towards a better approach to therapy.

They discuss the prayers that some Canadian churches have written to be said in advance of a death by euthanasia, and talk about the more fundamental failure to see pastoral care as legitimately shepherding and directive, but merely as supportive of whatever choice a person makes.

Finally, they read aloud some of the reader responses to Ben’s piece, and Ben responds.

His story, bound together with the story of Ulrich Zwingli, the Magisterial Reformer of Zurich, raises questions about the role of state authority in the life of the church, freedom of conscience, and the nature of conversion, which are still passionately debated today.

Peter and Susannah speak with Jason about the political-theological issues involved, the role of humanism and the return to sources in the Reformation, and the personal story too: Manz had been Zwingli’s protégé, almost his surrogate son, before he sentenced him to death.

They discuss also the historical background to the debates over baptism and tithes and church membership and independence which fueled the drama of Felix’s life, which involved a number of jailbreaks as well as intellectual ferment. The Ottoman armies were advancing, and Catholic Europe and the other Reformed areas were watching as this debate over the future of the Reformation played out in Zurich.

What are the new ChatGPT large language models? Is this AI? What’s the relationship between the philosophical questions regarding AI and other philosophical questions about whether human consciousness requires the immateriality of the intellect?

What are the dangers of AI? Leaving aside the question of physical danger to humans, what will the increasing ubiquity of AIs do to human civilization and self-conception?

Finally, what’s the relationship between AIs and the human tendency towards idolatry?

They discuss the medieval vision of the world, linked as it was to the cycles of the seasons, and talk about the way that nineteenth century speculations about the Pagan roots of Easter reveal a misunderstanding of the Anglo-Saxon worldview. The desire to connect to nature that is at the root of the search for putative pagan origins overlooks the way in which Christianity and Judaism themselves are deeply rooted in the natural world.

Dr. Parker then gives listeners a brief tour of the Springtime of the Anglo-Saxon year, and tells us what her favorite Spring holiday is.

First, he looks at the parallels to the Exodus, and examines what it means for Christ to be the Passover Lamb. Then, he looks at the Passion as apocalypse, as nativity, as romance, as enthronement, and as rebirth.

Then, he examines the truly scandalous nature of the Crucifixion, and, in light of Paul’s teaching on it, asks what it means that the lives of Christians should be fundamentally marked out by that scandal.

Finally, he gives advice on practices of reading attentively as a way of observing Holy Week.

The hosts and guests also discuss Joy’s visit to the Oberammergau passion play, its history, and the antisemitism that had marred it.

They talk too about the most recent rewrite: the scriptwriter, as he removed the antisemitism, chose also to remove also any supernatural or religious content.

They consider the changes in Medieval practices of piety – why was there such an increased emphasis on subjective compassion, emotional participation in the sufferings of Christ, after the turn of the millennium, and what was the origin of the increasing tendency to emphasize his humanity?

Then, the guests recommend favorite pieces of art for Holy Week contemplation.

They discuss the contrast between the story of Laocoön and of the crucifixion of Saint Peter, as portrayed in two contrasting artworks in the Vatican. Then they discuss the nature of crucifixion, how pain was seen by the Romans, and the utterly subversive way in which Christianity transformed the understanding of suffering in the West.

They talk about why it took so long for it to become common to portray Jesus suffering on the cross in Christian art, and how late medieval understandings of the self and the body contributed to this, and explore the ways that contemporary political movements incorporate Christian ideas outside of the context of Christianity.

Finally, they look at the lives of several exemplary Christians, whose lives of redemptive suffering in imitation of Christ make no sense except under the paradigm of the Christian transformation of the meaning of suffering. 

Peter and Susannah take Voltaire as an interlocutor first, considering the nature of the challenge of suffering.

Then, they look at Lewis’ first response: The Problem of Pain, which takes an apologetic or intellectual approach. The hosts examine the Christian origin of the problem – why was this not a problem in the Classical world? – and some Christian approaches to the intellectual challenge.

Then, they look at Lewis’ second book on the subject, A Grief Observed, a very personal journal of his agony after the death of his wife. They look at A Grief Observed through the eyes of Randall Gauger, a Bruderhof pastor who lost his son to cancer and whose wife suffers from chronic pain.

Finally, they give listeners a preview of important pieces in the current issue.

She and the hosts talk about the Canon Wars and the debates about what is to be included in the list of texts to be studied, and reflect on the proper skills and methods of having conversations about these works.

Then, they discuss the recent controversy about Christopher Rufo’s appointment to the board of a small liberal arts college in Florida. What is lost when liberal arts education is politicized?

Finally, they discuss Jenn’s new job: she’s the inaugural dean of a new “Great books” focused honors college at the University of Tulsa.

How can this cultural disaster have happened, and what can we do to prevent this approach to life and death from taking hold in our own families and churches?

Then we answer your questions: what are the implications of the fact that marriage is becoming the province of the upper middle and upper classes, while increasingly out of reach for the working class and the poor? Are plunging birthrates such a bad thing? Plus, responses to Matthew Lee Anderson on IVF, and more.

Then they discuss the specific ethical issues of in vitro fertilization, and reflect on the technologization of fertility through the lens of C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength.

Then, Susannah speaks with Pater Edmund Waldstein about the role of monasteries in Christendom, and how their witness to the supernatural life of the church complements the life of the natural family.

They go on to discuss questions of political order: since grace perfects but does not destroy nature, how should we think about polity? Is an ethnostate the only “natural” polity? Should we be trying to restore the Holy Roman Empire? Pater and Susannah solve all these problems definitively.

They argue that Enlightenment liberalism has proven insufficient to provide either a metaphysical or a political framework for human life, and call for citizens and leaders to build institutions that will support a more robustly moral realist vision of politics and community.

Then, Peter and Susannah talk with Boze Herrington and Hannah Long about Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne. Hannah, Boze and Susannah make the case that the genre of the traditional Western is not something which must only be deconstructed and criticized, but which in fact offers occasions to reflect on the deepest questions of human moral and political life: what is the role of force in an unjust world, what is the good of civilization, and what is the code that one ought to live by? Du Mez’s recent book, they argue, does not understand or do justice to the genre.

Then, Peter and Susannah welcome Dhananjay Jagannathan to discuss his piece “What Is Our Scholarly Inheritance?” Both past and future, Dhananjay argues, make us who we are, and in scholarship as in other human cultural pursuits, we step into a world, receiving an inheritance and becoming responsible for enriching and passing on that inheritance. Though this kind of generational relationship is not biological, it is very deeply human, and the chosen and unchosen aspects of non-biological generational obligations are what make up a civilization.

His uncle Mark’s scholarship was an inspiration to him, and on his uncle’s death, he felt the obligation to take up aspects of his work. The project of humanism is a multigenerational one, and not one that we do alone.

Then, they talk with theologian Alastair Roberts, Susannah’s husband, about the genealogy in Matthew and the way that looking at its details can call up Old Testament parallels and associations that give us clues about what God is doing in the birth of Christ.

They discuss the way that God works not just with individuals but with whole families through the generations, and talk about how we can be blessings to both our descendants and parents.

They also talk about Alastair’s experience of joining Susannah’s large family through their marriage. There are anecdotes about lobsters.

Why do we feel the need for roots? Is this something that should be purely met within the church? How does God renew our natural ties, and our ability to love intergenerationally? What are the promises and perils of the rooted life? And how can the wisdom of Christ help us avoid deracination on one hand and the worship of blood and soil on the other?

Then, they discuss with Prince Michael zu Salm-Salm his piece containing the distilled wisdom of a thousand years of his ancestors living in one spot, working the forests and vineyards of southern Germany. What does that kind of perspective give? They also talk about the Prince’s ecumenical work, in which he aims to mend the rifts of the Wars of Religion, through repentance under the Lordship of Christ. Plus, winemaking!

Are vows the origin of private conscience and thus the origin of secularism? Can human vows provide the kind of transcendence and eternity that even existentialists seek? Is it presumptuous to take a vow?

Then, Susannah and Peter discuss what they’ve learned from editing the Vows issue of the magazine and doing the Vows season of the podcast.

After that, they take listener questions – is it wrong to vow at all? How can we ensure that vows are made in love? And what are the hosts’ favorite cooking spices?

A veteran of the pro-life movement, Robert P. George reflects on the opportunity that we now have to build just laws that support the wellbeing of mothers and their children, and, echoing Lincoln, of the need to heal the division between pro-life and pro-choice Americans as much as possible, without compromising on what we believe to be right.

He discusses his thoughts about the non-libertarian future of pro-life politics, and the need for supporting both private and public aid to mothers and families. 

They also talk about the role of the Black church. What is the unique contribution that that tradition can make to our ongoing discussions of the proper interaction between faith and politics?

Then, Peter and Susannah speak with Lydia S. Dugdale. There are now no doctors in America who are required to take the Hippocratic Oath; generally, if doctors take an oath at all, it is one of their own devising, which changes from year to year. In a medical culture like this, what is lost? What is the purpose of medicine, anyway? Is there a purpose to it beyond treating patients as customers and giving them what they want?

Then, they talk with King-Ho Leung about his piece “The One Who Promises.” What’s the difference between a vow and an oath? How have vows been seen in Jewish and Christian thought? 

He examines the teachings of Philo of Alexandria, of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of Martin Luther in his attempt to understand how our ability to make vows is rooted in God’s own faithfulness, in the nature of language, and in His identification with the Logos, the Word.

Christianity makes universal claims, and all our national loyalties and other lesser loyalties are relativized by our loyalty to the Kingdom of God. In light of that, how can we best live out our local and universal commitments in friendship with each other?

Then, they speak with Tom and Sue Quinta, a couple who joined the Bruderhof after a long journey through the counterculture of the 1960s.

What did it take for a young hippy couple to make lifetime vows to a Christian community, and in what of the non-Christian spirituality they explored did they see the work of the Holy Spirit? How does a vow shape the experience of a life, and how can we understand the uniqueness of Christ in light of the spiritual hungers of the whole of the non-Christian world? 

Monasticism, marriage, and the military are forms of commitment that commonly allow people to dig in to their own lives; all three are on the wane. How can we embrace commitment and push back against the ephemerality and weightlessness of the uncommitted life?

Then, they welcome their colleague Caitrin Keiper to discuss vows in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. Both Valjean and Javert, in their different ways, live their lives according to a vow. How do these different commitments lead to each of their ends? And how does grace shape the outcome of each of their vows?

Will artificial intelligence become sentient? How will we understand ourselves if we believe they are sentient? What can we do about it, and how can we live in a more human and embodied world?

Then, Peter and Susannah take listener questions. How can we go about living in a society which feels as though it’s falling apart?

Then, they speak with Samuel Moyn about his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Is making war more “humane” actually removing the urgency of actual pacifism? What if we simply aimed to have fewer wars? Have we given up on that?

The gang get into it about Just War Theory, pacifism, the Peace and Truce of God movement, and many other things.

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 denying those fathers and not by wallowing in guilt, but by the deep forgiveness and transformation available in Christ.

Then, Peter and Susannah speak with Anika Prather about her year of mourning with her children: many family members and friends died, of Covid, of murder, of suicide, of heart attacks. How can we parent our children through such incredibly trying times? How can we truly teach them to look to the hope of the resurrection of the dead?

Then they discuss Dr. Prather’s life project: understanding and using the Classical tradition for racial reconciliation in America. This is another kind of “healing of history,” and Dr. Prather’s work in classical education is an ambitious attempt to tell the untold story of Black classicists and the influence of the great tradition on Black thinkers, writers, and activists.

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” discourse, which even now is focused on “the wrong kind of people” having too many children. They discuss the issue of hard limits- surely there must be some point past which human population can’t grow, some actual environmental catastrophe? What then are we aiming for? How long should we plan for? Then they talk about whether the need for limits and the need for ambitious vision in human endeavor are in conflict with each other.

Then they discuss what it takes, spiritually and culturally, for a society, for individuals, to believe that the world they are in, the family they are in, is one worth preserving.

Then, Peter and Susannah talk with extremely online illustrator and self-described mystical idiot Owen Cyclops about his journey from general weirdness to Christian weirdness. They get into his cartoon for Plough, and his interest in the specific American temper of Christianity, and how universal principles and teachings get refracted by different cultures.

Then they have a conversation with Ivan Rusyn, the president of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, whose wartime experience has included sneaking back to his home in occupied Bucha to bring help to his neighbors.

He describes the current state of the conflict and calls on Christians to help with pressing needs; he also describes the incredibly powerful experience of Christian and civic unity that the war has led to in Kyiv and across Ukraine.

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 that in community? Zena, Peter and Susannah address all of these questions.

Then Peter and Susannah tackle listener questions, facing #Imaginegate head-on. Other listener questions include the question of bad music: can music make you worse? Also, the importance of silence.

They discuss what makes derivative Christian music bad, and how some Christian hardcore escaped the fate of imitative mediocrity. They also discuss the way that YouTube comments provide a strange Covid-era community of nostalgia for the children of the ’80s and ’90s.

Then, Pete and Susannah talk with Plough’s own Joy Clarkson about her newly-published title Aggressively Happy, a how-to guide to finding joy. Unlike many such guides which focus on one’s internal state, this book encourages readers to find joy in the actual goodness of the world: it is an anti-stoic text.

Most controversially, Joy makes the case that Pride and Prejudice’s sycophantic vicar, Mr. Collins, is unfairly maligned and is a model of appropriate ambition, resilience, and contentment. 

Then they turn to a discussion of the war, and of the role of art in a time of war. The archbishop closes in a prayer for peace and justice.

Peter and Susannah then speak with their colleague Maureen Swinger about her piece “Doing Bach Badly,” about the history of the Saint Matthew Passion and of its role in the liturgical life of the Bruderhof. They reflect on the way that singing can put you in a position to experience grace, and Maureen recalls a very specific experience of singing as conversion from her teenage years.

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 the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri: A Cosmographic Journey through the Divina Commedia.

They also discuss the various dramas of Dr. Alighieri’s Dantean year, the 700th anniversary of his ancestor’s death, including a playful relitigation of his ancestor’s banishment trial.

Then, they go full galaxy brain: How did Dante’s ideas look forward to contemporary post-Einsteinian concepts about the shape of the universe?

The three of them also talk with Paul Buckley about the challenge of incorporating psalm chanting into Protestant worship, and how ingraining psalms into your life can allow them to show up for you when you need them.

Then, Pete and Susannah speak with Stephen Michael Newby about the tradition of Black spirituals, about the absolute necessity of racial reconciliation, and about the role of music in that reconciliation.

They discuss how spirituals work: their theology and their practice of bringing the events of Scripture into the immediate lives of those who are singing them.

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 the world as well: music can call out the best in you, and can make you worse. It is not something to be taken lightly.

Then they bring on Mary Townsend to talk about Dolly Parton and her exhibition of the Aristotelian virtues of magnificence and magnanimity: the way in which she spends money out of thoughtful love for the public good, and the way that her generosity in song reflects a fundamentally Christian experience of having been given a gift of song. In this way, Dolly may serve as a truly Christian corrective of Aristotle’s more masculine and humorless magnanimous man. The petite blonde woman from Tennessee may be the closest thing we have to a living example of public and thoughtful greatness that is also good and beautiful.

They also reflect on what they’ve learned in doing this issue. As it turns out, disability is not a “niche” topic: it cuts to the heart of what it means to be human, and to the heart of Christian hope.

Thinking well about disability also challenges us in our times of ability to realize that making the most of our talents, developing our strengths, in order to be able to help others, is an obligation: we need to be needed, and we need to give, in order to be fully human.

Then, they speak with Leah Libresco Sargeant about her three most recent pieces for Plough: on dependence and illiberalism, on the question of whose bodies matter in our public discussions, and on how design for those with and without disabilities can make a welcoming world.

How do we raise our children in a faith without driving them away from it? How can we make a world that is welcoming to all human people, not just those who match the pattern of the adult male liberal subject?

They also discuss Denmark’s famed “eradication” of Down syndrome, and its cost: the eradication of people with Down syndrome.

Then, they speak with J. D. Flynn about a recent Times piece exposing the extreme unreliability of prenatal genetic testing, and the assumptions that the piece makes (by implication) about the value of human selves.

Flynn also describes his and his wife’s own experiences as parents of two adopted children with Down syndrome and one biological child without it: how can we receive all children, adopted and not, of all “kinds,” as gifts?

How should we die? How can we value and care for those who no longer have the same abilities they had when they were younger, but who are still vital members of the human family?

How should we make babies? How can we guard the mystery and gift of children from a false sense of our own mastery over their creation?

How should we live? How can we become the people we are meant to be by exercising care towards those who need our help, and by receiving care from those who love us?

How does the utilitarian obsession with quality of life and rejection of those who suffer attack the dignity of all of us? And how can an awareness of the existence of sufferers pull us out of our own meritocratic prisons?

Then, the hosts talk with Ross Douthat about his chronic Lyme disease and the way that official science can be limited. What does the experience of suffering teach us about the reality of the divine, and how do these liminal states open us up to transcendent reality?

They discuss the phenomenon of the “Ugly laws” of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Nazi eugenics program, the limitations of communitarianism, and the way that questions of disability touch on everybody, because they are about what it means to be a human in a body.

Then they welcome Plough contributor Victoria Reynolds Farmer, a writer with cerebral palsy who discusses her Marian devotion, her recent Catholic conversion, and what that has meant for her marriage and the prospect of motherhood.

Then, they revisit the question of the reality of nations - What’s important about national identity? Is it always dangerous? How is it related to family identity? How can we love, be rooted in, and derive some of our identity from imperfect - profoundly imperfect - countries?  

Then we move into speculation. Do nations have specific angels looking out for them? Is there such a thing as a national calling in history? If so, what is America’s?

Pete and Susannah speak with Ashley about the process of writing the piece, and about the various issues that Shoatz’s life and story bring up. Can we acknowledge the wrongness of the murder, the pain of the murdered man’s family, and at the same time see the man behind the convict?

The episode also features Russell’s son, Russell III. He tells the story of the two fathers in his life: the imprisoned former Black Panther, and the police officer/minister who adopted him.

Meanwhile, Dhananjay’s immigrant story and thoughtful loyalty to the America of the American idea will not let him dismiss patriotism.

Then, John Milbank brings us to the deepest of deep roots, with a full-throated defense of a nation that is linked to a place, and which is not based on an idea. His piece is a hymn to the mythic geography of England.

Then they welcome historian Tom Holland, author of Dominion, to discuss the difference Christianity made to the mind of the West and the idea of Empire. What is the unique capacity Christianity has for appealing to both fighters and pacifists? How have those two strands in its history woven together, and what can we make of the profound subversion of Roman ideals of power represented by the Cross?

And in what sense can virtually every person in what was once Christendom call him or herself a Christian? Wokeness, Holland claims, can best be understood as a Christian heresy; Hitler, the head of the first movement to thoroughly repudiate Christianity not just institutionally but in principle, becomes a substitute for Satan. And we begin to look to the most marginalized, the most powerless, as Christ figures. 

Then, they welcome Plough’s favorite integralist, Pater Edmund Waldstein, to discuss his piece on the natural law case for welcoming refugees, what relationship that has to the Gospel imperative to do so, and how to think about those obligations in relationship to the integrity of the cultures and places and people who receive those sojourners.

Also covered: Gustav Landauer’s surprising atheist Jewish anarchist pro-Christendom position, the relationship between the nation and the political state, and how to think about national borders.

Then they turn to the question of the nature of online worlds. Can we talk coherently about the nature of Twitter, say? What does the way we behave online say about us? Is online a “place” with its own identity?

Next: Why not let children be feral? What’s the point of school, and doesn’t it just ruin our ability to be naturally and fully human? Related to that, why read anything but scripture? Then, they return to the question of UFOs: if they were proved to exist, would their existence affect Peter and Susannah’s faith?

Finally, they turn to the big questions: what is nature anyway? And what have they learned from doing this podcast series? What are their takeaways?

Gracy’s work has been fundamentally shaped by her friendship with Wendell Berry, and by Berry’s own work. Is his agrarianism mere romanticism? Can there be a kind of love of the local that is not agrarian?

Then, the hosts speak with Norann Voll about her move from Upstate New York to rural Australia. How can we learn to love a new place? What does it look like to put down roots when you’re ambivalent about where you are?

Norann also discusses the process by which the Danthonia Bruderhof has learned how to manage their land: to regenerate the soil and to create a fertile homeplace in the midst of the badlands.

Then, the hosts speak with John Kempf about his piece “Regenerative Agriculture: An Amish Farmer’s Quest to Heal the Land.” What is regenerative agriculture? How is it distinguished from organic farming? Isn’t it more labor intensive, and doesn’t that mean that it will require some unrealistic percentage of people to return to farming? Above all, can it feed the world? Don’t we depend on high-input farming, complete with fertilizers and pesticides, to be able to produce as much as we do?

Kempf makes a strong case that not only is regenerative agriculture – which seeks to rebuild soil health and plants’ own immune systems, as opposed to depending on chemical fertilizers and pesticides – the only kind of agriculture that will enable our farmland to feed many generations in the future, it’s also more productive now. And it honors the intricate interdependency of plant, animal, human, and microbial life that reflects the wisdom of the Creator.

Then, the hosts speak with friend of the pod Sohrab Ahmari, about his recent book The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos.

The traditions we are raised to respect shape us. How did the birth of Ahmari’s son encourage him to write a book wrestling with the ways that traditions can help answer some of the basic questions of human life? What does it mean to be rooted in tradition, and why would one want to be? What happens when traditions are bad? And how can we understand “traditionalism” not as a good in itself, not as a bespoke lifestyle choice, but as the guiderails of a community in which we, and our children, can flourish?

Then they talk with Plough contributing editor Leah Libresco Sargeant about her piece “Let the Body Testify.” Are we disembodied wills unrelated to our bodies, using them as meat robots? Or are we embodied souls whose selfhood persists even if we are unable to advocate for ourselves?

The imprisoned Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, not a religious believer, nevertheless had a mystical experience of nature that changed his life. The Boston writer Ian Marcus Corbin tells Havel’s story in an ambitious Plough essay “The Abyss of Beauty,” which the hosts discuss, prompting Susannah to describe her own, distinctly urban, version Havel’s conversion experience.

The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat then joins The PloughCast for a wide-ranging discussion of nature-related topics. First up is a debate whether there is such a thing as natural law, and if there is, why it fails to move public opinion on controversial questions such as bioethics. Ross then recounts his personal story of the dark side of nature: a harrowing experience of long-term Lyme disease which led him to write his forthcoming book The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery (October 2021).

On a lighter note, Ross agrees to talk about the paranormal: UFOs (now also known as UAPs or “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), space aliens, and alien abductions. What are we to make of the US military’s recent official confirmation of UFO sightings? Are aliens part of the natural world, or are they supernatural – perhaps the same beings formerly called fairies and elves? Finally, an important warning: Don’t anger the Good People.

I'm convinced that Christians should not use lethal violence. Does scripture outline what those who don't follow Jesus, acting on behalf of the state, should or shouldn't do with regard to levels of violence to restrain evil?

How do we read the violence in the Old Testament?

What about Just War Theory? Does the state have a moral obligation to use violence, to prevent or reduce the possibility of greater violence? Was the Second World War justified?

Plus: Striped bass fishing, the Lambs Club, creative minorities, beer-making, and why Susannah can’t be shunned.

Then, they catch up with Rachel Pieh Jones, whose eighteen years living among Somali Muslims has taught her more than she could have imagined about her own Christian faith. Her book, Pillars, released recently with Plough Books, describes this journey of friendship and discovery.

Pete and Susannah also talk about Bruderhof Easter Gardens, and almost-post-vaccination life in New York City.

Then they have a conversation with Plough regular contributor Zito Madu about the violence that poverty visits on the marginalized. Zito discusses his piece focusing on rap as a survivor’s art form, focusing on Styles P, whose songs give voice to the difficulty of simple survival in a culture of poverty. The essay discusses the ways in which poverty itself is a kind of violence – and how this violence is both similar and dissimilar to the kind familiar to Greek legendary hero Oedipus as imagined by André Gide. 

Peter and Susannah discuss the nature of the Christian life as a kind of military service, and the need that we have to live a life of commitment to something beyond ourselves.

Then they welcome Rhina Espaillat, Dominican-American poet, in whose name the annual Plough poetry contest has been founded; she reads several of her poems and talks about the nature of poetry and her inspirations; Rhina and Susannah get into a debate about martyrdom.

And what does it mean to oppose, or practice, political violence today? Should one punch Nazis? And if so, who is a Nazi? What is Antifa, what are the Proud Boys, and how and why did they make Portland their battleground this summer? Patrick Tomassi, a native Portlander, did the unthinkable: he actually talked with all of those involved. Hear about his interviews with Antifa, with Proud Boys, with BLM activists and with local business owners and police. Learn about the way that these groups use each other, and the media, to create narratives, which reinforce their own understanding of the conflict, and learn about how they understand what they are aiming at.

And what about other kinds of political violence? Can we condemn riots and still, in principle, be open to the idea of a just war? Can a Christian ever kill?

Peter and Susannah get into these questions, and then turn to discussing the White Rose, a student movement of German Christians whose leaders were executed in 1943. The White Rose was a nonviolent movement passionately opposed to the Nazi regime, arguably the ancestor of today's antifa movements. But their philosophy and approach were very different. Drawing from the heights of German culture and the political philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, these young people articulated a vision of opposition to the Nazis based on an embrace of the best of traditional Western, and human, thought. They accused Hitler of being a tyrant, by which they meant something very specific: that he had rejected the values they argued for, which had characterized Germany and the West – learning, discourse, indeed Christianity and “traditional values” – and embraced pure power and barbarism. To be a humanist, for these young people, and to be a Christian, and to be an antifascist: these were all different aspects of the same calling. And they ultimately gave their lives to answer that call. What would it look like to pattern our activism on their lives?