Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth. Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature's Limits: The Roman Inquisition and the Boundaries of Science (U Chicago Press, 2022) engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper b...
Sep 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 49
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter , founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities...
Sep 12, 2023•33 min•Ep. 109
J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork The Lord of the Rings delighted so many of us as children, yet it and its vast body of accompanying work, such as the Silmarillion , contain a rich depth not well understood by most adults. Tolkien's work reflects his academic interests in the history of language and the Medieval world, as well as his Catholic faith. What purpose and religious message does his writing contain? Does his work carry a political meaning? Here to discuss is Professor Rachel Fulton Brown, A...
Sep 12, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 84
On the second Saturday of each month, on the outskirts of the ancient city of Varanasi, Shiva's own city, thousands of shudra and Dalit devotees worship Yesu (Jesus) at a Catholic ashram. In an open-air pavilion more than three thousand women and men alternately sit, stand, and sing; they offer testimonials of healing, and receive the blessings of encounter from an unlikely deity. Facing this ocean of humanity is a 12-foot billboard Christ, arms outstretched, urging in Hindi: "Come to me all you...
Sep 07, 2023•54 min•Ep. 282
For Augustine, the world is replete with meaning; it represents not merely a collection of facts to be catalogued but a repository of truths to be discovered and discerned, a view which contrasts with the one we have inherited as a result of the thought of figures such as Descartes, Newton, and Kant. What difference would it make to see the world as created? In On Creation, Science, Disenchantment and the Contours of Being and Knowing (Bloomsbury, 2019), Matthew W. Knotts explores this question ...
Sep 05, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 248
Today I talked to Kathleen Osberger about her book I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 (Oribis Books, 2023). In 1975, Kathleen Osberger, who’d just graduated from Notre Dame University, flew to Chile to teach in a Catholic school in Santiago. She was assigned to live with several religious women, and when she arrived, was told that they would sometimes shelter dissidents who were wanted by the secret police. This was after the CIA assisted coup that overthrew democratically elect...
Sep 05, 2023•18 min•Ep. 356
Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico (U California Press, 2023) explores the multiple and mostly unknown ways progressive and conservative Catholic actors, such as priests, lay activists, journalists, intellectuals, and filmmakers, responded to the significant social and cultural shifts that formed competing notions of modernity in Cold War Mexico. Jaime M. Pensado demonstrates how the Catholic Church as a heterogeneous institution--with...
Sep 01, 2023•57 min•Ep. 195
Kevin Vallier is a philosophy professor and author of All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism (Oxford UP, 2023), a new book about Catholic Integralism, a mostly online intellectual movement that thinks the church should take over the state, something that made sense fifteen hundred years ago after the collapse of the Roman Empire, but not so much day in our pluralistic, democratic age. Professor Vallier’s goal is to help us all talk together with patience a...
Aug 31, 2023•59 min•Ep. 68
Father Chris Pietraszko has been thinking about sin and redemption for the last year and a half as he has been writing a series of articles that will become a book. Relying on the Gospel, Catholic Doctrine, Thomas Aquinas, and his experience in the confessional, Father Chris explains the mechanism of sin, how it works in our lives, and how it is to be defeated. He reflects on his experience as a confessor and explains the relationship between the deadly and venial sins. Articles by Father Chris ...
Aug 24, 2023•59 min•Ep. 67
American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts that enrich the church. Churches have generated policies, programs, and curricula geared toward "including" disabled people while still maintaining "able-bodied" theologies, ministries, care, and leadership. Ableism―not a lack of ramps, finances, or accessible worship―is the biggest obstacle for disabled ministry in America. In From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministr...
Aug 22, 2023•39 min•Ep. 27
Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn State University Press, 2023) , art historian Adam Jasienski examines the history, meaning, and cultural significance of a crucial image type in the early modern Hispanic world: the sacred portrait. Across early modern Spain and Latin America, people prayed to portraits. They prayed to “true” effigies of saints, to simple portraits that were repainted as devotional objects, and even to images of li...
Aug 21, 2023•50 min•Ep. 47
Sandie Holguín speaks with Jennifer L. Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020). In addition to her book, Dr. Holland has recently published an article in Feminist Studies , “‘Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust’: Children and Young Adults in the Anti-Abortion Movement.” Dr. Holland is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and Book Review Editor for the Journal of Women’s History . In Tiny You ...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 128
Jonathon Fessenden, theologian and editor of Missio Dei, invited me to talk about The Fourth Wise Man , the 1985 film based on the 1895 Henry van Dyke novella, The Other Wise Man . It was a tale I had known as a children’s story, but it was a delight to learn more about it, to watch this movie (a few times), and to share this discussion with Jonathon. Martin Sheen plays Artaban, a Persian astrologer, a magus (one of the magi ), who is following the star to the birth of Christ. But he arrives too...
Aug 03, 2023•53 min•Ep. 65
The poor have always been with us, even in a rich country and a prosperous time. I ask Ben Metcalf, former Secretary of Housing and Community Development in California, about the challenges and successes of the government in providing shelter for its people. Our conversation recalls the question from Matthew 25:37-38, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?’ I was pleased to see that m...
Jul 27, 2023•54 min•Ep. 64
With its expanding legal system and its burgeoning throngs of lawyers, legates, and documents, the papacy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has often been credited with spearheading a governmental revolution that molded the high medieval church into an increasingly disciplined, uniform, and machine-like institution. Reimagining Christendom: Writing Iceland's Bishops Into the Roman Church, 1200-1350 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) offers a fresh appraisal of these developments from a surpri...
Jul 25, 2023•51 min•Ep. 45
In this important historical account of the role that religion played in defining the political life of a modern national society, Paul A. Hanebrink shows how Hungarian nationalists redefined Hungary--a liberal society in the nineteenth century--as a narrowly "Christian" nation in the aftermath of World War I. Drawing on impressive archival research, Hanebrink uncovers how political and religious leaders demanded that "Christian values" influence public life while insisting that religion should ...
Jul 21, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 192
Bishop Todd Hunter is an Anglican Bishop in Tennessee and author of What Jesus Intended: Finding Faith in the Rubble of Bad Religion (IVP, 2023). He argues that, despite the troubles of the world and the messes we make, we should embrace Jesus’s invitation to follow him and live in his friendship and in his Kingdom right now. The goal is “being the cooperative friend of Jesus, seeking to live a life of constant creative goodness, for the sake of others, through the power of the Holy Spirit.” Bis...
Jul 20, 2023•57 min•Ep. 63
The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943–1944 i...
Jul 15, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 418
Father Chris talks about his devotion to Our Lady, and what he has learned from St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska, the poor Polish country girl, whose visions of and friendship with Jesus gave us Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Chris calls it the “Extra Credit of Grace.” We also talk about suicide and intercessory prayer and why God choses to work with broken tools. Fr. Chris is Provincial Superior of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception in the United States and Argentina. Father Chris’s page o...
Jul 13, 2023•57 min•Ep. 62
Kimberly Bird is vice president of external relations of Live Action , an online media advocacy and education organization that works to shift public opinion on abortion and protect the lives of children between conception and birth. I ask her about the most effective ways she has found to change people’s minds, instead of just screaming at each other, or past each other. I also ask her who the women who are getting abortions and why (the answer surprised me), and about the places of agreement a...
Jul 06, 2023•49 min•Ep. 61
Professor David Tavárez, historian and linguistic anthropologist, is Professor of Anthropology and at Vassar College. He is a specialist in Nahuatl and Zapotec texts, the study of Mesoamerican religions and rituals, Catholic campaigns against idolatry, Indigenous intellectuals, and native Christianities. He is the author or co-author of several books and dozens of articles and chapters. This Dr. Tavárez’s third time on the New Books Network. He spoken twice in 2020 about his earlier work: his 20...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 43
The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate (Fortress Press, 2022) is Eric Vanden Eykel’s second monograph overall and his first geared at a popular, non-scholarly audience. However, even scholars will find much to appreciate and more than a few narrative surprises from this thorough account of the Magi (often translated in English Bibles as “wise men” or “astrologers”), for it succeeds as an excellent recent example of uncompromising, but accessible, publi...
Jul 03, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 117
Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés , this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation of students are most familiar with. Each chapter includes: A description of a particular cliché; Discussion of where it appears in popular culture or popular media; Discussion of where it appears in scholarly literature; A historical contextualization of its use in the past; An analysis of...
Jul 01, 2023•42 min•Ep. 204
Eduard Habsburg is Archduke of Austria and Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He’s also a husband, a dad, and a regular guy. He talks about Star Wars and Dune , Harry Potter and James Bond . He is probably the first member of the Order of the Golden Fleece to have written the screenplay for a zombie movie. I ask him about his family—both his happy marriage and six children, and also the dynastic history of the House of Habsburg. I also ask him his work as a di...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 60
The Great Schism divided Western Christianity between 1378 and 1417. Two popes and their courts occupied the see of St. Peter, one in Rome, and one in Avignon. Traditionally, this event has received attention from scholars of institutional history. In The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity (Cambridge UP, 2022), by contrast, Joëlle Rollo-Koster investigates the event through the prism of social drama. Marshalling liturgical, cultural, artistic, literary and a...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 245
The Middle Ages is a term coined around 1450 to describe a thousand years of European History. In The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2014), Miri Rubin provides an exploration of the variety, change, dynamism, and sheer complexity that the period covers. From the provinces of the Roman Empire, which became Barbarian kingdoms after c.450-650, to the northern and eastern regions that became increasingly integrated into Europe, Rubin explores the emergence of a truly global syste...
Jun 27, 2023•50 min•Ep. 40
Dr Lynsey Black is a lecturer in criminology, in the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University. She researches in the areas of gender and punishment, the death penalty, historical and postcolonial criminology, and borders. In this interview she discusses her new book, Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64 (Manchester UP, 2022). Gender and Punishment in Ireland explores women's lethal violence in Ireland. Drawing on comprehensive archival research...
Jun 27, 2023•39 min•Ep. 46
Jonathan Fessenden, theologian and editor of Missio Dei , and I discussed this ancient and supremely interesting book on his podcast. The Book of Job is one of the oldest poems in our tradition. It is a joy to read and a puzzle to wonder about: why does God allow—even provoke—the Accuser to destroy Job’s life and test his faith? What does it mean for us when things are not going the way we hope? What is this troubled world, this vale of tears, for in the first place? The video of our discussion ...
Jun 22, 2023•52 min•Ep. 59
In his new book, Down Deep in My Soul: An African American Catholic Theology of Preaching (Orbis Books, 2023), Father Maurice Nutt, a doctor of preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology and a Redemptorist priest, teaches us about African American oratorical and homiletic tradition and shows how it can enrich preaching in every church. This is a discussion about history, cultural anthropology, and the Roman Catholic Church. As always, we ask how we got here and where do we go next. I also ...
Jun 15, 2023•49 min•Ep. 58
Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization at Catholic Answers . His piece, “What Happens in Purgatory?” is the most read article on the entire website. I ask him to explain what the Catholic Church says (and doesn’t say) about purgatory. How does purgatory work? ...and how about heaven and hell? How should we think about these ‘places’ and about eternity? Tim Staple’s profile in Catholic Answers Tim Staples’s article, “What Happens in Purgatory?,” in Catholic Answers, July 8, 202...
Jun 09, 2023•48 min•Ep. 57
