In launching our partnership program in 2024, we expanded how we pursue our mission by serving a curatorial and custodial role beyond the scope of the recordings that originate in our studio. We are pleased to offer the Features listed below, each of which has been provided by one of our Partners. These Features include lectures and texts read as “audio reprints.” Listeners may also sign up for free Partner-affiliated memberships to listen to all Features provided by particular Partners. Simply choose a Partner from the list of Partners on this page, and follow the sidebar instructions to sign up.
Christian culture and the myth of the secular
Ken Myers draws on T. S. Eliot to argue that Western civilization has broken down, not into a multiplicity of cultures, but into a “post-culture.” (47 minutes)
How to make war on nothingness?
David Bentley Hart argues that if it rejects Christ, the only remaining option for a post-Christian culture is conscious or “narcotic” nihilism, which takes the form of absolute, meaningless volition. (66 minutes)
The Bride of Christ
John Cavadini explores the different views of Origen and Augustine as to the nature and mission of the Church, and he calls for a recovery of the identity of the Church as the Bride of Christ. (38 minutes)
The inward eye, cosmic truth, and making well
Andrew Kern takes his listeners along an “interlinear” reading of a portion of St. Augustine’s Confessions that explores the differences between how God makes and how we create. (38 minutes)
The epistemology of love
In this lecture, N. T. Wright examines the epistemology of love and how it counters the reductionism of Enlightenment and Epicurean ways of knowing. (63 minutes)
“If there is no God, all is permitted”
Gary Saul Morson explores the consequences of belief and disbelief in God through Russian literature. (51 minutes)
Grace and Christian realism
Jennifer Frey explores Thomist elements in Flannery O’Connor’s theology and writing, with a particular emphasis on a Thomist understanding of art. (39 minutes)
A humanist urban vision for Chicago
Philip Bess imagines what metropolitan Chicago might look like in one hundred years if it were designed according to classical humanist principles and with an overt acknowledgement of sacred order. (93 minutes)
Rose without thorns
Ken Myers introduces various settings of “Ther is no rose of swych vertu,” a medieval carol that uses imagery of a rosebush to describe the Virgin Mary. (29 minutes)
A “cosmological omnibus”
George Grant recounts the fascinating history of Hernando Colón’s attempt in the 16th century to curate a universal library of the world’s knowledge. (41 minutes)
The cost of “killing” God
In this October 2023 lecture, Carl Trueman explores the concept of “desecration” as a frame for understanding the nature of modernity in our time. (42 minutes)
“Investigations of divine works”
Greg Wilbur explains how closely connected music is to the order of the cosmos and how it even reveals attributes of God. (56 minutes)
Silence at the end of history
Alan Jacobs examines several literary imaginings of “the last days” and argues that such narration is profoundly inadequate and perhaps even presumptuous. (51 minutes)
To be at home in the world
D. C. Schindler examines how rituals enable us to experience time in a meaningful way — how they actually make time habitable for us. (41 minutes)
Moral reasoning and human flourishing
Tim McIntosh describes moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s intellectual conversion to a synthesis of Aristotelian ethics and Christianity, best embodied in Thomism. (44 minutes)
Art that witnesses, consoles, and strengthens
Artist Margaret Adams Parker explores the human need to lament and reveals how various “arts of lament” console, strengthen, bear witness to those who engage with them. (51 minutes)
Cosmic realities in the built world
Christopher and Christine Perrin discuss the implications of architect Christopher Alexander’s (1936–2022) discovery of patterns of building that cohere with the the created cosmos and with ourselves as human creatures. (59 minutes)
The “book” of Creation
Alan Noble explains why the modern world makes it profoundly difficult to experience Creation as revelation, and he encourages unmediated encounters with Creation that lead to meditation. (52 minutes)
Life more abundantly
Jeanne Schindler advocates for a return to an understanding and prioritizing of sensory experience — real engagement with the real world — as foundational to learning and living. (35 minutes)
Heaven and earth are full of His glory
Gerald R. McDermott examines the typological tradition of the Church, particularly through Jonathan Edwards’s thought, and he argues for a recovery of the Christian understanding of the universe as an “immense Trinitarian symbol.” (61 minutes)
An invitation to a feast
Christina Bieber Lake explains how poetry is an invitation to experience the beauty and goodness of Creation as gift. (44 minutes)
Mordor versus the Shire
In this lecture, Heidi White explains how the modern project is a diabolical inversion of Christendom and calls for Christians to build lives and a culture that can counter it. (53 minutes)
The “scandal” of theology in the university
Edward T. Oakes, S.J. explains why John Henry Newman’s eloquent defense of the nature of university education, The Idea of a University, continues to inspire, challenge, and even frustrate its sympathizers. (24 minutes)
Man as “both mystic and hobbit”
D. C. Schindler explores how building is a quintessential human activity and an expression of our view of the meaning of reality. (47 minutes)
