The Commonweal Podcast

Readers of Commonweal and beyond will likely recognize Lawrence Joseph, the author of many books of poetry and prose, and whose work has often appeared in the pages of our magazine.

We’re delighted to report that Larry has just published a new collection of poems, entitled Precisely Now. It’s a collection of thirty-two poems, some of which appeared for the first time in Commonweal, that he began shortly after the first election of Donald Trump in 2017 and continued writing right up to the present.

They are poems of linguistic compression and colloquial precision that, as our literary critic Anthony Domestico puts it, “match anything published in the past half-century in their formal control and moral witness.”

On this episode, senior editor Matthew Boudway talks with Larry Joseph about the

new collection, the poet’s process of composition, and the theology of grace.

For further reading

Anthony Domestico reviews Precisely Now

Lawrence Joseph’s poem entitled ‘Now Light’

Lawrence Joseph speaks about So Where Are We?

By now, many of us are familiar with the realities of the Trump administration’s violent campaign of mass deportations. But how often do we listen to the stories of some of the most vulnerable victims—young children and teenagers separated from their families?

Gabrielle Oliveira, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, did just that. For her ethnographic study Now We Are Here, she followed sixteen migrant families from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and her native Brazil from 2018 to 2021.

All of Oliveira’s subjects experienced some form of family separation as a result of U.S. immigration policy under Donald Trump. Yet all also managed to remain in the United States, where their educational journeys remain the single most important factor in their lives.

On this episode, Oliveira speaks with Commonweal Director of Mission and Partnership Claudia Avila Cosnahan about how these families have metabolized the trauma of separation.

Plus, Commonweal Senior Correspondent Heidi Schlumpf speaks with Dominic Preziosi about the latest in Catholic news, including the midterms, new Catholic converts, and the U.S. Bishops’ pointed letter to Donald Trump on behalf of Haitians living in the United States.

For further reading:

Heidi Schlumpf on new Catholic converts

Jonathan Heaps on the Catholic theologian joining DHS

A photo essay of migrants forced to remain in Mexico

What happens when we read the Bible? Why do we read it? What does it do to us?

There are at least as many answers as there are people. Our interpretations of the Bible depend not only on what we read—which texts, which translations, etc.—but how and especially with whom we read it.

On this episode, professor of spirituality—and editor of the Commonweal Podcast—David Dault joins associate editor Griffin Oleynick to discuss the ethics of reading the Bible, detailed in his new book The Accessorized Bible.

Core to Dault’s argument are the Jewish concepts of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, and tzniut, indicating modesty. Reading—and even willfully misreading—the Bible with these in mind can help commit us to liberation instead of coercion, to peacemaking rather than violence.

For further reading:

Christian Wiman on the Bible as poetry

Luke Timothy Johnson on the history of the Bible

Sarah Ruden on translating the Bible

Debates over artificial intelligence tend to vacillate between the poles of blustery optimism and spiraling despair, with AI boosters making stratospheric claims for the technology just as critics vociferously denounce its capacity for disruption.

But could there in fact be a via media on AI, a path that celebrates technological advances while also respecting limits and safeguards?

The key to such a shift, argues ethicist Meghan Sullivan, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, where she also directs the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, is a commitment to prioritizing human life over technocratic paradigms.

That means, above all, foregrounding human dignity—a concept the Catholic Church is well-positioned to articulate.

Plus, Commonweal senior correspondent Heidi Schlumpf reports on Catholic news from the past few weeks, including schism, ICE roundups, and new polling about young people and religion.

For further reading:

Our symposium on Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas

Meghan Sullivan on the DELTA framework for AI

Heidi Schlumpf on the ‘tradwife’ phenomenon

Vaccines have encountered resistance ever since they were invented in the late eighteenth century.

But vaccine skepticism has never been as vocal—or as widespread—as it has become in the United States in recent years.

Much of that has to do with the policies of the Trump administration, in particular Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose drastic changes at the CDC have reversed decades of American vaccination policy.

But what explains such broad receptivity to vaccine skepticism among wide swaths of Americans?

On this episode, Commonweal associate editor Regina Munch speaks with Kiera Ganga Kieffer, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. Her new book, Unvaccinated Under God, offers a provocative reading of the history of vaccine hesitancy in America.

Anti-vaccination beliefs are less a matter of scientific misinformation, Kieffer argues, than forms of religious expression, in which vaccines themselves become proxies for broader existential concerns about justice and morality.

For further reading:

Regina Munch on Kennedy’s crusade against vaccination

Michael Peppard on persuading anti-vaxxers during the pandemic

M. Anthony Mills on rebuilding America’s scientific infrastructure