Front Porch Republic
The Commons in a Cardboard Box
A box by a door. A hand that picks up. A name that calls an object to account.
Relics of the Fleeting Past
A room once filled with my son and his belongings was mostly empty. It wasn’t the absence of his stuff that hurt; it was his absence. But as I ran…
ChatGPT Can Code. But It Cannot Discern.
Colleges and universities should focus on forming the uniquely human attributes that AI cannot replicate.
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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A Hammer Needs a Nail: Songs About Work
In conjunction with the most recent issue of Local Culture and with FPR’s fall conference, we’re listening to songs about work on this week’s Symposium of Popular Songs.
Greek, Pruning, and Environmentalism
Charlotte Alden profiles the fascinating school that the brilliant Donald Antenen has started in his hometown.
A Great Gathering at Baylor
While I was talking with one Texan who was at her first FPR conference, she told me, "I think I've found my people."
Andrea Kirk Assaf on Lessons From the Stoics
My guest is my friend Andrea Kirk Assaf, whom I have known for, well, a few decades now. She is the author most recently of 365 Lessons From the Stoics…
More Articles
Inside a Web of Love: Thoughts on Gurney Norman
As Gurney’s family and friends wrestle with the loss of their friend, I hope they—or more accurately we—will lean into being lonely inside a web of love.
Poetic Responses to Turmoil
Smith's poem has returned to my mind several times, especially in moments, like our current one, of cultural and political turmoil.
Learning the Glad Game with Shemaiah Gonzalez’s Undaunted Joy
Her essays feel like invitations to look for joy.
The Many Lives of Milton’s Paradise Lost
For anyone who endeavors to read or teach "Paradise Lost" for the first time, I could hardly imagine a better single-volume guide to the work’s author, context, themes, and significance.
Battle Above the Clouds
Returning home on any other evening, I might have noticed the gold leaf edges of the icons on the shelf smoldering from the sun through the window.
Reconciling Art and Nature: Wendell Berry’s New Novel
Wendell Berry has written a ninth Port William novel, and it is unlike any other in the set.
Understanding the Theological Assumptions behind “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life”
Is there any room for common ground between these competing views?
Eddington’s Warning to Screen-Addled Souls
Kudos to Ari Aster and his film "Eddington" for showing us the truth of what is happening to us in our social media saturated world.
Shallow and Hollow: Media’s Romance Problem
Deep down, humans not only want but also require enduring, stable relationships.
From the Archive
Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
The Road Taken
Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.
Where Is Our Freedom to Exercise Sympathy?
The same things that happened to the family farms, and to farmers like my father, are now happening to the colleges, and to faculty like me.
The Art of Living an Examined Life
If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far…
Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…