McCain’s Favorite Poem, Defending Chess Tables, and 1968
“How Civil Must America Be? Americans care about being nice. How do we disagree with our neighbors about guns?” Jacqui Shine visits Grinnell, Iowa,...
Instagram, Silicon Valley, and Hunger Stones
“The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley—and Won.” Nicholas Confessore tells the story of how a real estate investor convinced California to pass...
Monsanto, Walking, and Hardware Stores
“Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289m as Jury Rules Weedkiller Cause of Man’s Cancer.” Sam Levin reports on the remarkable finding of a San Francisco...
The Humanities, Baseball, and Hunting
“Simone Weil’s Deeper Grace.” Scott Beauchamp explains why Simone Weil is such a necessary thinker for us to listen to. Keep an eye out...
Localism, Trade Wars, and Teaching
“Restoring Localism.” Joel Kotkin claims that if there’s one thing both conservatives and progressives should be able to agree on, it is the need...
A Localist Revolution, Aldo Leopold’s Conservatism, and Public Intellectuals
“The Localist Revolution.” David Brooks writes in defense of localism: “We’ve tried liberalism and conservatism and now we’re trying populism. Maybe the next era...
Baseball, Debt, and Postman
“Birds, Bricklayers, and Baseball.” Sam Edgin reviews Stanley Hauerwas’s new book, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, which is comprised of 16...
The Contemplative Life, Southern Writers, and a Tech Backlash
“Review: A Trappist monk tells of a life worth living.” Gregory Hillis reviews a new book by Brother Paul Quenon, a monk who began...
Agroecology, Eric Miller, and Manual Labor
“Bringing Farming Back to Nature.” Daniel Moss and Mark Bittman report on the encouraging growth of agroecology. (Recommended by Tom Bilbro.)
“The Oak Tree Almanac.”...
Anthony Bourdain, the Galloping Gourmet, and Reading Together
“Flourishing in a Digital World.” John Fea records a live episode of The Way of Improvement Leads Home podcast. Near the end, the conversation...