New Persuasive Words
Episode Archive
Episode Archive
328 episodes of New Persuasive Words since the first episode, which aired on August 7th, 2015.
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Episode 342: Is MAGA The White Man's Rastafarianism?
February 27th, 2025 | 32 mins 9 secs
In this episode, inspired by a quote from Ezra Klein, we consider the mythic and mystical components of the MAGA movement. Do they correspond to a broader current in the culture that some on the left are out of step with today?
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Episode 341: Where is the Progressive Outrage over Kfir Bibas?
February 23rd, 2025 | 54 mins 29 secs
In this episode we wonder why there isn't more progressive outrage over strangled babies and other recent atrocities committed by Hamas.
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Episode 340: Hillbilly Curia?
February 17th, 2025 | 39 mins 50 secs
In this episode we unpack Vice-President Vance's recent comments about the Ordo Amoris. We ask the age old question: what's love got to do with it?
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Episode 339: A House Divided Against Itself?
February 11th, 2025 | 36 mins 48 secs
In this episode we consider the different ways in which identity is constituted, and how our identities might be in tension or even conflict.
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Episode 338: Whose Christ? What Culture?
February 6th, 2025 | 42 mins 53 secs
In this episode we consider some classic questions about the ethics of Jesus and the Church's relationship to culture.
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Episode 337: American Political Heresies
January 29th, 2025 | 37 mins 35 secs
In this episode we examine the current intellectual and ideological foundations of the New Right in America, and consider how the right and the left seem to mirror some ancient Christian heresies.
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Episode 336: An Ode To Repugnance
January 27th, 2025 | 33 mins 1 sec
In this episode we talk about what to do when you come across a repugnant idea. With T.S. Eliot as our guide, we consider what strong visceral reactions to ideas and ideologies might tell us about ourselves.
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Episode 335: What would Capon have said to President Trump?
January 24th, 2025 | 24 mins 25 secs
In this episode we talk about Bishop Mariann Budde's recent sermon, in which she personally addressed and exhorted President Trump. We wonder what the Gospel is for President Trump, and the great Robert Farrar Capon would have done in Bishop Budde's shoes.
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Episode 334: Shall We Overcome?
January 22nd, 2025 | 31 mins 17 secs
In this episode we talk about what it means to walk by faith and not by sight in public life.
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Episode 333: Has Democracy's Expiration Date Passed?
January 19th, 2025 | 40 mins 36 secs
In this episode we consider whether our democracy can adequately respond to the concerns and crises that face the American citizenry.
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Episode 332: Monday Monday!
January 13th, 2025 | 34 mins 35 secs
It's Monday and we have a few things to say with the Inauguration just a week away!
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Episode 331: The Philosophical Roots of "Wokeism"
January 9th, 2025 | 42 mins 3 secs
In this episode we engage with a talk given by Bishop Robert Barron at the Acton institute. The topic of the address is the philosophical roots of "wokeism."
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Episode 330: The Quest for the Historical Adam
January 4th, 2025 | 42 mins 20 secs
In this episode we talk about Original Sin and human origins, inspired in part by an essay on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that appeared in a recent issue of the Christian Century.
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Episode 329: A Shocking Faith
December 28th, 2024 | 47 mins 39 secs
In this episode we talk about a recent piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks Entitled "The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be." We also consider some of the response it's generated in public discourse by people of many faiths and no faith at all.
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Episode 328: The Jewishness of Jesus
December 23rd, 2024 | 38 mins 42 secs
In this episode we talk about the Jewishness of Jesus and what it means in the context of contemporary antisemitism.
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Episode 327: The Ecology of Christmas
December 20th, 2024 | 29 mins 58 secs
In this episode we contrast the ecology of the Roman Empire with the ecology of the Christmas story.