Evangelization & Culture Podcast

When Fr. Nate Wills raised doubts about his qualifications to serve as the University of Notre Dame’s football team chaplain, Fr. Pete McCormick assured him, “We don’t need you to call plays. We just need you to point [people] to Jesus.” Join me and Fr. Nate Wills on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast as we explore his book, Pray Like a Champion Today, a rich unfolding of lessons learned from and imparted to the extraordinary Notre Dame football team and the greater university community.     Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.   You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Angels are appointed to the guardianship of men, that they may take them by the hand and guide them to eternal life, encourage them to good works, and protect them against the assaults of the demons.” As we grow in our faith, shouldn’t we do the same for others? Through his Instagram pages Marian Militia and Monk Mindset, George Jacobson is taking people by the hand. Join me and George Jacobson on The Evangelization & Culture Podcast as we explore how, in an age of uncertainty, one Catholic college student is lighting the fires of faith in others. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.  

Sir William Osler, the godfather of internal medicine and a gifted professor once observed, “No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.” Alasdair MacIntyre was one of the most consequential moral philosophers of the twentieth century and a keen professor at the University of Notre Dame. What did MacIntyre believe and how did he teach? Join me and Catholic philosopher Dr. Christopher Kaczor as we explore the impact Alasdair MacIntyre had on his students (like Dr. Kaczor) and the world of philosophy on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

Novelist and short story writer Flannery O’Connor once insisted, “You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.” In her short stories, Katy Carl weaves tales of despair and hope, brokenness and healing, and all being captured in the glory and grit of the human condition. Many ask, “Where have the good writers gone?” Read Katy and you’ll find one of them. Join me and Katy Carl, author of Fragile Objects, her first short story collection, on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

“Every human person seeks peace, spiritual peace within oneself and with others, and material peace through a social life of friendship, charity, and genuine justice. What is at the heart of this aspiration? What indeed is peace?” Join me and Fr. Thomas Joseph White as we discuss his new book Contemplation and the Cross on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

Millions of pages have been written seeking to answer one vexing question: How did Adolf Hitler happen? Was the Führer of the Third Reich an accident of history or a fearsome warning of what the future may hold? Join me and Timothy Ryback as we explore the cunning and the luck, the designs and the accidents that brought Hitler to power in Ryback’s captivating book, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

The modern world tells us that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” And yet, the Catholic Church deems beauty a transcendental. Is beauty something predictable, ephemeral, and a simple matter of taste? Or is beauty surprising, enduring, and objectively indisputable? Join me and Bishop Robert Barron as we explore the burning question, “What is beauty?” on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

In his iconic Templeton lecture, Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn summarized the horrors of the twentieth century’s Communist experiment, saying, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Join me and Ignat Solzhenitsyn as we explore his father’s heroic words and exquisite diagnosis of man’s plight without God in his book, We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

In his autobiographical book, Derek Ruth explains, “During my time in heaven, Jesus gave me a choice, but I had no idea what the choice would entail. I believed I would come back to earth and continue living like I had been for the first twelve years of my life. I had no idea the trials and tribulations I would face in order to regain my life. And it has not been easy, but I would make the sale choice. I would choose this life.” Join me and Derek Ruth, with the help of his father Royce and his mother Jennifer, as we discuss The Eight-Minute Flight on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

In his essay, “How the Great Truth Dawned,” Professor Gary Saul Morson muses, “Why is it, Solzhenitsyn asks, that Macbeth, Iago, and other Shakespearean evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses, while Lenin and Stalin did in millions? The answer is that Macbeth and Iago ‘had no ideology.’” Notwithstanding its rabid inhumanity, Professor Daniel Mahoney asserts, ideology always makes a brutal comeback. Join me and Daniel Mahoney as we explore his chilling and informative new book The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then & Now on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

  As Matthew Becklo asserts, “The Catholic faith is full of paradoxes, but its greatest paradox is this: that all of its both/ands unleash this ultimate either/or, and all of its communion compels this unavoidable decision.” Are we with Christ or against him? And how do we balance the dynamic tensions (faith or reason, discipline or passion, spirit or flesh) that risk pulling us too far in one direction or another? Join me and Matthew Becklo as we consider his new book, The Way of Heaven & Earth: From Either/Or to the Catholic Both/And, on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

What happens when a young man with an entrepreneurial heart and gifted piano-playing hands writes a letter to renowned public intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr. offering to play a concert for him out of gratitude? A lifelong friendship of shared musical appreciation and warm conversation begins. Join me and Lawrence Perelman as we unfold his unique and ennobling relationship with William F. Buckley, Jr. in his book American Impresario on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

How are we to look at the world? Through a brilliant lens of hope, wonder, and gratitude? Or through a shadowy lens of despair, cynicism, and selfishness? The journalist, wit, and Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton is an extraordinary model who mastered the art of a marveling Catholic vision. Join me and Dr. Duncan Reyburn as we explore his excellent book, Seeing Things As They Are: G.K. Chesterton and the Drama of Meaning on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

When you consider the story of Pinocchio, you are flooded with visions of a Disney-fied wooden boy with big blue eyes, a lengthening nose, and a mischievous heart. But reading the original Pinocchio (and its theological underpinnings perceived by Franco Nembrini), you are shocked by the misanthropic boy, his violent experiences, and his perpetually merciful father. Join me, Marcie Stokman, and Colleen Hutt as we revisit the original tale of Pinocchio, re-released by Wiseblood Books/Well-Read Mom, on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Blair Witch Project, and The Exorcist have scared the daylights out of a generation of moviegoers. And even though viewers startle and jump, chill and scream, they keep coming back for more. What is it that makes us crave a good scare? And where is God in the fright of such horror movies? Join me and Fr. Ryan Duns as we seek God in the darkness in his new book, Theology of Horror: The Hidden Depths of Popular Film on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast.   Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

Flannery O’Connor once prayed, “I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.” Is there any meaningful relationship in life that can survive without an element of selflessness, dedicated time, and earnest conversation? Why would a meaningful relationship with God be any different? The prophets prayed, the saints prayed, and most of all, Christ himself prayed. But how do we do it? How do we know there is a God on the other end of our entreaties, and how can we understand God’s answers? Join me and Bishop Robert Barron as we explore the brilliant yet vexing, humbling yet heartening art of prayer on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

What happens when we live our lives through mediating technologies? We take countless pictures but don’t look at our kids. We film vacations but are never fully present. We search for answers online but rarely puzzle over the questions. And we distract ourselves from difficult emotions, but we never take on the cross-bearing work of the soul. In the early twentieth century, French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos worried that such a superficial existence would create little more than “stumps of men.” Join me and Christine Rosen as we explore her book The Extinction of Experience on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

We want what other people have. We conjure up rivalries. And we scapegoat our enemies in the process. What on earth are we doing? Join me and Fr. Elias Carr as we unpack philosopher René Girard’s mimetic theory and the “scapegoat mechanism” on the Evangelization & Culture Podcast. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

What exactly is the “life of the mind”? Is it merely a matter of being bookish, bespectacled, and (*gasp*) potentially boring? Or is the “life of the mind” awash with limitless wonder, captivating wisdom, and life-changing vocation? Join me and St. John’s College tutor Dr. Zena Hitz as we dive deeply into the joyful adventure of intellectual formation as told in her award-winning book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.  Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.

In his new book, Dr. Carl Trueman writes, “The very rhetoric and concepts of critical theory, the other, intersectionality, and their like have become influential tools of wielding power rather than dismantling it. And so—as Frankfurt School members Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno themselves would no doubt point out—things have become their opposite; the liberator has become the tyrant, the tools of freedom have become the weapons of oppression.” Perhaps Goethe’s Mephistopheles captures critical theory best when he uttered to Faust, “I am the spirit that negates.” Join me and Dr. Carl Trueman as we discuss the philosophy and the danger of critical theory in his new book To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse. Stay up-to-date with the latest episodes of the Evangelization & Culture Podcast biweekly on WordOnFire.org, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get more content like this in the quarterly print journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture.