Articles Archive

It's rare to have the opportunity to look at another person, especially a stranger.

I'm taking the month of July off from doing new episodes and using the opportunity to re-air some episodes you might have missed. This one is from 27 October 2025…

The differences between the Television Age and the Internet Age are just as illuminating as their similarities.

Affectionately known by her grandchildren as “Lulu,” I knew Katherine Walbert Walker, of Oklahoma City, only as “Aunt Kathy.”

Pretending we are not what we are—finite, dependent creatures—limits our freedom to act rightly in the world.

Plough is accepting submissions for its short fiction contest through September 1st. The winning story will be published in Plough, and the winning writer will receive a prize of $2,000.…

The mass hysteria of modern consumerism got hold of this product launch, and the result was mobs and fist fights.

While students struggle, we ensure that all of our pieces of paper align properly and our electronic signatures are where they are supposed to be.

In this episode of A Symposium of Popular Songs, which originally aired 22 September 2025, we listened to songs about solidarity, one-half of the foundation of Catholic social teaching. Send…

The Declaration begins with a riddle for today’s readers.

As writers, our job is to remind us of our truest selves.

In the spring, I was jolted into change. Because that was when I embarked upon the discovery of time.

Pushkin offers us the sovereignty of the personality through work on oneself.

The poet, the teacher, and the student together form a chain of transmission in which what is handed down is a way of being in the world.

Be gentle—we’re listening to songs about arguments this week, and trying to figure out the strange pleasure of them. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com! Programming note: Francophile that I…

As the work wore on, my hands, feet, and knees blistered.

Before the deportation, Chechnya belonged, in a significant sense, to the old world.

The surveillance state is meant to be like God: all seeing, all knowing. An essential third attribute—all loving—seems to have never been considered.

Most current iterations and applications of AI in the form of LLMs actually turn humans into reverse centaurs.

This week we’re listening to songs about dreams—not in the sense of goals or ambition but in the sense of images that flash across your subconscious as you sleep. Send…

There is always more at stake in our everyday lives than might at first meet the eye.

Consumerism's troubling impacts on American society are a concern of both Right and Left. But limiting our material appetites doesn't have to be a sacrifice.

Leo calls us to find meaning in the mundane aspects of human life and care. In doing so, he articulates the centrality of limits in the human experience.

Unusually for books on homeschooling, Skipping School is written for both scholarly and general audiences.