News, Notes, & Podcasts

I'm taking the month of July off from making new episodes of A Symposium of Popular Songs and using the opportunity to share some older ones you might have missed.…

Sarah Reardon cautions against the typical American narrative that frames vacations as a respite from busyness.

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening mostly to songs about men picking up, or trying to pick up, women—though there are two songs that reverse that…

Brian Miller cuts hay in the same field he’s been mowing for twenty-six years.

For a while, the episode risked becoming an episode on unreliable narrators—but really we’re talking about obsession, a subject I suspect we all know something about. Send your song suggestions…

Shawn Regan describes the manifold benefits the Great Salt Lake provides and the cross-partisan effort to replenish it.

We’re approaching the ocean from fourteen different directions on this week’s A Symposium of Popular Songs, featuring, for whatever reason, some very long songs (as well as a few short…