Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms D. C. Schindler argues that the loss of authority is the greatest of all human crises. When Nietzsche speaks of the death of God, which will lead to calamities, Schindler sees the great loss of authority. Liberalism's dismantling of any authority in favor of the sovereign individual has lead to the collapse of social order and the pursuit of a genuinely common good. In this podcast with Andrew Willard Jones, D. C. Schindler...
Jul 17, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms We live in a disillusioned political age, one where old liberal arguments no longer have hold. Conservatism has moved into a right-wing politics which no longer sees the value of Christianity. Lost in an ostensibly equal mass, individuals have experienced a loss of identity. New developments in technology, and especially AI, present an existential threat to human agency. In our time (2025) and place (America), we need the s...
Jul 03, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Reuben Slife discuss the latest New Polity magazine, Issue 6.1, and specifically the translation of Alberto Methol Ferré's striking essay "The Church, People Among the Peoples." Is the Church a visible people, or a people among the peoples? How does the Church overcome oppositions, universal-particular? New Polity Magazine Issue 6.1 is available for order. Rocco Buttiglione's new book Modern...
Jun 19, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In this podcast, Reuben Slife interviews Rocco Buttiglione about his life and work. Buttiglione was promised by Luigi Guissani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, that a Christian life will never be boring; taking this wager, he discusses his studies with Augusto Del Noce, his early encounters in Poland with Karol Wojtyła, his appointment to the European Union and time as Italian Minister of European Affairs, and the ...
Jun 05, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In honor of the new Pope Leo XIV, and in celebration of the 134th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Alex Denley and Andrew Willard Jones discuss the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII and the birth of modern Catholic Social Teaching. Modernity's Alternative is now available for order! Registration is open for New Polity Conference 2025 ! Subscribe to New Polity Magazine ! Join the conversation on our Discord...
May 15, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In honor of the passing of the Pope, Marc Barnes and Reuben Slife discuss the life of Francis and the theology which he embodied: the theology of peoples. They also discuss Rocco Buttiglione's new book Modernity's Alternative and how Latin America formed the Pope's pastoral life and mission. Modernity's Alternative is now available for order! Registration is open for New Polity Conference 2025 ! Subscribe to New Polity Maga...
Apr 24, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms At the 2024 New Polity conference, Matthew B. Crawford gave the keynote address in which he contrasted the view of man inherent in technocratic rationalism with that of a Christian view. Drawing from the work of Joseph Ratzinger and Michael Oakeshott, Crawford draws a distinction between an orientation toward receiving life as gift and cramped rationalism that views man as an object to be synthetically remade. The current p...
Apr 10, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In the 20th century, a movement of priests and laypeople sought to find a way past the clash of ideologies that wracked Latin America. They found a solution in Latin America itself, which was born out of the conflict between Europeans and natives when, with the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Guadalupe, the grace of God forged one, new people out of strangers and enemies.This movement—called “theology of peoples”—focuses o...
Apr 03, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms What is the difference between a people and a nation? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Ernest Renan's influential lecture "What is a nation?". Renan argues that a nation is not formed by common descent, language, religion, or geography. Rather, a nation is a spiritual principle that requires sacrifice, and a forgetting of the past. Marc and Alex discuss Renan's definition of a nation and how it formed th...
Mar 20, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms In this special episode of Political Saints, Marc Barnes and Nicolas McAfee discuss the heroic political life of St. Thomas More. Thomas More was the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 until 1531. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and was executed. Pope Pius XI canonized Thomas More as a martyr in 1935. Dr. Nicolas McAfee is the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the Center for Th...
Mar 13, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms For the last five years, the Political Right has been debating over a program for regime change in America: should populism be used to construct a new elite class? Should a new administration retire all government employees? Can the bureaucratic state be maintained but filled with new conservative staff? In this podcast, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss subsidiarity as the solution to this debate, and how it...
Mar 06, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms What is the meaning of national identity? Does strong national identity necessarily create a hostile relation with other nations? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Joseph Ratzinger's short book "The Unity of Nations." Through a discussion of the political theology of Origen and St. Augustine, Ratzinger shows how the early Christians viewed their relation to the nations, and Christianity's nation-unifying ...
Feb 27, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Registration is open for New Polity Conference 2025 ! In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's book "The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood." What is distinct about the brotherhood of Christians? Are there different ethical modes of acting to the brother and the non-brother? How does this impact our understanding of peoples and Christianity? The book is available from Ignatius press : S...
Feb 06, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Are we headed to a grand and glorious technological future? In this talk, Andrew Willard Jones expects the opposite: "The Future is Always Worse Than You Think It Will Be." As he explains, there are two paths with the development on new technologies: one which leads to an extension of the humane world into greater areas, and another, the technocratic, which closes and mines the world from within. This talk was given at the ...
Jan 16, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Registration for New Polity 2025 conference is now open! Don't miss out on our early bird price: https://newpolity.com/events/2025 In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley review the latest New Polity Magazine, Issue 5.3, which includes articles on sex discrimination in the workplace, the demise of the hippocratic oath, the state of the pro-life movement, and more. New Polity Issue 5.3 is available for order at https://...
Jan 09, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Register here for New Polity 2025: Our Kind of People The fifth annual New Polity conference takes “the people” as its theme and object of wonder. Motivated by the apparent victory of populism in the United States’ 2024 election, and inspired by the Holy Roman Pontiff’s love for Latin America’s “theology of the people,” this meeting of theologians, philosophers (and, let’s face it, preachers ) is devoted to thinking deeply ...
Dec 19, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Pre-order The Church Against the State . The Church sees the world as God’s good and harmonious Creation, a primordial peace. In his acclaimed book Before Church and State, Andrew Willard Jones revealed that society in the High Middle Ages was a striving toward liberation by grace, which led to subsidiarity. In The Church Against the State, he argues that this uniquely Christian political form is still with us, present in o...
Dec 06, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms All the energy and vitality today is on the political right; the old conservative reactionary stance has been replaced with active, rival voices aimed at constructing a new regime. One such voice is Bronze Age Pervert and his followers. Through their series "The Politics of Paganism," Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones have explored the Nietzschean proposal, arguing that it is doomed to failure. The pagan cosmos is a closed w...
Dec 05, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Why do we not feel free? As modern liberalism continues to isolate and divide, our common experience is a lack of freedom, of being constrained and enslaved. But, how can true freedom be restored? In this episode of the Politics of Paganism, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss the New Law and how grace restores true freedom. Subscribe to New Polity Magazine! https://newpolity.com/magazine Join the conversation over a...
Nov 21, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms St. Thomas Aquinas presents salvation history in three stages: The Age of Nature, the Age of Law, and the Age of Grace. The pagans are stuck within the age of nature; fallen humanity inevitably declines into idolatry and slavery. But, God has a plan for saving man. From the time of Moses until Christ, God's chosen people are in the Age of Law which points forward to the coming of Christ. In this podcast, Alex Denley and Dr....
Oct 31, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms The pagan cosmos is a closed world: the city is never truly self-sufficient, requiring natural slaves and war; regimes rise and fall cyclically; the regime's justice is never true justice. In the Treatise on Law (ST I-II, Q.90-108), St. Thomas Aquinas presents a different vision: the open world of grace. God orders the world through the eternal law; rational creatures participate in providence through human law; divine law ...
Oct 17, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Plato and Aristotle argue that aristocracy is the ideal regime, but it never lasts for long. What's most powerful wins, and the masses are always the most powerful in number. Eventually, every pagan regime declines into the production of idols and temple slavery---whether Egypt, Greece, or Rome. In this episode of the Politics of Paganism, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss this decline and what brings it about. Subsc...
Oct 03, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Medically-assisted suicide bills are being introduced in states all over the country. Proponents say that it allows people to "die with dignity" and that it gives people "autonomy." But, the actual reality is far darker. In states like Oregon and California, people have been denied life-saving treatment and recommended suicide. People with disabilities and depression have been pressured into suicide. In this podcast, Pat Mc...
Sep 27, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Aristotle's "Politics" is full of deep insight: politics as the architectonic science, the mixed constitution, happiness as the end of the city. But, there's a group which is excluded from human virtue; namely, the natural slave. Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss how the "natural slave" reveals the structure of Aristotle's just city: a limited class of citizens over an unspecified amount of slaves. And, that the desp...
Sep 19, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Ted Benna has been called the "Father of the 401k." But now, he says that he created a monster. He intended for the 401 (k) to help turn spenders into savers, but it has become full of hidden fees and salary reductions that only enrich the financial industry rather than savers. In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam interview Ted Benna for his story of the 401 (k). Essays by New Polity on Money " Should Christians Inve...
Aug 30, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms James Donald Forbes McCann returns for a special episode of Good Money. He has more questions for Jacob Imam and Marc Barnes: Why do Americans use cash? What's the marital debt? Why should people sell their stocks? More of James Donald Forbes McCann . Subscribe to New Polity Magazine! https://newpolity.com/magazine . Join the conversation over at Discord ....
Aug 22, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Plato presents a vicious circle that every regime goes through: from a limited aristocracy, to a timocracy of honor, an oligarchy based on wealth, a democracy based on liberty, and, finally, the tyranny of the one against all. While some regimes may be more just than others, it is bound to collapse eventually. Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss Plato's description of the individual and his regime, the circle of regime...
Aug 08, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Everyone has a sense of what is just and unjust, but what is the source of justice? In this episode of "The Politics of Paganism," Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss Plato's "Republic." Through a discussion of the luxurious city, the myth of the mixture of the elements, the Allegory of the Cave, and finally the Philosopher-King, Alex and Andrew show the tension in Plato between relative and absolute justice; b...
Jul 25, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms Death comes for everyone. For the Christian, death is the passage into eternal life; but, what about for the Pagan? Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss the problem of death for pagan regimes. Using St. Augustine's "City of God," they discuss Cain's murder of Abel, the founding of the city by violence, the inferior law of violence, and the overturning of death by Christ. If you want to read ahead, next up is Plato's "Re...
Jul 11, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on other platforms As the liberal order continues to collapse, rival voices have gained popularity—groups that aren’t content secularizing religion, but rejecting Christianity altogether. Old pagan arguments are resurrecting: the aesthetics of power, might-makes-right, vitalism and tyranny. Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss their new series “The Politics of Paganism” and how Christianity can understand and defeat the pagan atta...
Jun 27, 2024
