Society & Culture Episodes

Prof. George Corbett examines how Dante’s vision of Christian wisdom, politics, and philosophy stands in deep harmony with Aquinas and Pope Leo XIII’s Leonine Thomistic revival, against Etienne Gilson’s charge that Dante shattered both Thomism and Christendom.

Prof. Jonathan I. Lunine presents his life as a planetary scientist and Catholic convert as a lived example of the harmony between faith and science, then highlights two priest‑scientists—Georges Lemaître and Gregor Mendel—whose foundational work on the Big Bang and genetics shows that Catholic bel…

Dr. Timothy P. Flanigan, M.D., presents Catholic faith and medicine as profoundly harmonious, showing how Christ’s person‑to‑person healing, the Church’s hospital tradition, and a “culture of life” can and must be lived inside today’s secular, therapeutically focused healthcare system—precisely whe…

Prof. Lawrence M. Principe argues that the supposed “war” between science and faith is largely a modern myth, constructed in the late 19th century by figures like John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White for personal, political, and ideological reasons, then amplified by secularizers, technocra…

Fr. Philip-Neri Reese argues that while grimdark fantasy (exemplified by George R. R. Martin) can be just as true artistically as Tolkien-style classic fantasy, it is necessarily less good in the fullest Thomistic sense because it structurally valorizes nihilism and hopelessness rather than orderin…

Prof. Lee Oser portrays the Inklings—and especially J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis—as a countercultural circle of Christian writers and scholars whose friendship, medieval learning, and shared experience of war grounded a robust Christian imagination that resisted modern secularism by telling better…

Prof. Lee Oser argues that Christian humanism—the “radical middle” between secularism and sectarianism—offers the best key to Shakespeare’s plays, showing how Julius Caesar and Hamlet dramatize our tragic ignorance about the fate of the soul and the limits of pagan and early modern attempts to know…

Prof. Joshua Hochschild shows how Dante’s Paradiso offers a philosophically rich, Thomistic, and Neoplatonic vision of the cosmos in which goodness, truth, beauty, and peace name both God’s own life and the ordered, participatory structure of creation that our rational desire seeks to know and love.

Prof. George Corbett presents Dante’s Divine Comedy as a transformative “journey of desire” in which the passionate intellect—shaped by Virgil (reason) and Beatrice (grace)—leads the sinner from the dark wood of sin and ignorance through Hell and Purgatory to the ordered love and beatific hope of P…

Prof. W. Scott Cleveland explains how food and alcohol can either undermine or promote true happiness, arguing that gluttony is a disordered desire for the pleasures of eating and drinking that disrupts health, friendship, and virtuous living rather than their proper role in a flourishing, festal l…

Dr. R.J. Snell argues that the real epidemic behind student anxiety, boredom, and frenzied achievement is not laziness but sloth—a refusal of responsibility and a sadness at the divine good—that resists joy, commitment, and genuine happiness.

Prof. Jerome Foss argues that what Americans call the “Bill of Rights” is not a true bill of rights but a set of constitutional amendments best understood within a Federalist—and broadly Thomistic—vision of law, liberty, and the common good that resists reducing politics to individual rights talk.

Prof. Joshua Hochschild shows how St. John Henry Newman’s lifelong “struggle against liberalism” is best understood as an Aristotelian critique of false views of knowledge, in which liberalism reduces religion to private sentiment and denies the knowability of first principles, rather than as a mer…

Dr. Bronwen McShea uncovers the rich but often forgotten history of Catholic women in the arts and sciences, showing how figures from late antiquity through the early modern period—nuns, scholars, patrons, and university professors—have long made serious intellectual and cultural contributions with…

Prof. Kenneth Kemp reexamines the Scopes “Monkey Trial” to show that it has been mythologized into evidence of a supposed war between science and religion, arguing instead that the real conflicts concerned constitutional law, educational policy, and competing theological and philosophical visions w…

Prof. Karin Öberg reflects on her journey from atheism to Catholicism and explains how the vocation of a Catholic scientist and professor involves uniting rigorous scientific inquiry with the Catholic intellectual tradition in order to contemplate God through creation and to renew the life of the u…

Prof. Michael Dauphinais explains what contemporary culture needs to learn from Thomas Aquinas, arguing for a metaphysics of communion in which God, family, Church, and society are not locked in competition but share common goods that make each more fully alive.

Prof. Christopher Tollefsen explains John Paul II on euthanasia, showing how the Pope’s vision of human life as a sacred gift, bearing God’s image and destined for eternal friendship with Him, rules out any claim to a right to kill oneself or others.

Dr. Jan Bentz explores what it means to engage politics as a Catholic, calling believers to critical thinking rooted in truth, a both‑and logic that resists polarization, and a discerning love of nation that remains ordered to the common good and eternal beatitude.

Prof. Kevin Kambo reflects on race, racism, and antiracism through Augustine, showing how modern racial categories operate as idolatrous myths born of the lust to dominate and calling listeners to see others instead as icons of God rather than instruments of civic or ideological projects.

Fr. Chris Gault explores whether AI like ChatGPT should change how or why we study, showing that while machines can accelerate information processing, only human study forms our minds, virtues, and relationship to truth in a way that leads to real fulfillment.

Dr. Erik Dempsey explores whether we make morality or discover it by unpacking Aquinas’s three natural inclinations and arguing that they ground objective, inescapable moral obligations rather than mere social conventions.

Prof. John Cuddeback reflects on why many students feel relationally unsatisfied in a hyper-connected world and shows how reclaiming embodied presence, intentional discernment of a few trustworthy friends, and technology-limited, silence-friendly communal spaces can restore the depth, vulnerability…

Prof. Michael Krom explores how athletic rivalry, when rooted in justice and love of the good, can deepen genuine friendship, build virtue, and lead toward a contemplative vision of life.