Sword&Spade

Andrew Tolkmith is the assistant literary editor at Word on Fire and author of "We Are What We Sing" in the Winter 2025 issue of New Polity. Today, he joins Jason Craig to make the case that folk music is not a genre but the way a people expresses itself, and that most men have inherited nothing to sing. They trace what recorded music replaced, how a song like Tom Dooley is born and handed down, and why the Church has always been a singing people.
 

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why recorded music turned listening into private consumption—and what it replaced
• The difference between music you choose and music a people hands down
• How a real folk song gets made, using Tom Dooley as the example
• Why every priest vows to pray the psalms daily but is not bound to say Mass daily
• Three songs Andrew says every father should have in his home

 
Resources Mentioned:

• "We Are What We Sing" in New Polity, Issue 6.1
• Word on Fire Luminor
• The Stillwater Hobos, My Love, She's in America
• Kingfisher Folk Fest
• Fraternus

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 0:38: Inside Word on Fire's literary imprints
• 2:51: The article—"We Are What We Sing"
• 6:54: When recording turned music into a product
• 14:50: The concert and the community it counterfeits
• 18:11: Tom Dooley and how a folk song is born
• 26:30: Canongate, the Stillwater Hobos, and a music he never inherited
• 42:56: The vow to sing—the divine office
• 52:48: Three songs for a father's home
• 57:59: Kingfisher Folk Fest, August 1

Jason Craig sits down with Tyler Blanski, author of Find Your Fight: Rugged Wisdom for Faithful Dads Who Refuse to Settle, who grew up certain that following Christ meant dreadlocks, an urban church plant, and probably a prison cell in a third world country. Now, he mows his lawn in a Minneapolis suburb and calls it his vocation. They talk about what it costs a man to trade a radical vision of Jesus for an ordinary one, why nothing about being a husband or father works without friendship in order, and what to say to the guy in his forties who can feel his fire going out.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why a boy raised on missionary stories believed following Christ meant selling everything—and had to be converted toward an ordinary life in the suburbs
• The collapse of a six-year plan to become an Anglican priest, and the salary that forced a move into business
• Why the book was born around fires and in parish book clubs, and why every good thing comes out of some fight with a friend
• The tension the book is really about: turning the other cheek while flying a flag that says don't tread on me
• The counsel for a man in his forties who's lost his fire—savor your wife, your children, and the life in front of you

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Find Your Fight: Rugged Wisdom for Faithful Dads Who Refuse to Settle by Tyler Blanski
• Tyler Blanski
• The Minnesota Catholic
• The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Jason Craig and Thomas Van Horn

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 01:56: A Boring Dad Who Once Wanted to Be Radical for Jesus
• 09:02: The Priesthood That Didn't Happen and the Job That Did
• 13:11: The Friends Around the Fire Who Made This Book
• 16:42: Can You Be Catholic and American at the Same Time?
• 22:10: Detachment, Divided Interests, and Pleasing Your Wife
• 24:44: Suburbia, Homesteading, and Where Fathers Actually Live
• 32:55: Don't Let Your Love Grow Cold
• 44:33: Our Lady of Grasshoppers and the Outpost of Normality
• 51:10: Savor Your Wife, Your Children, and the Life You Have

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Jason Craig welcomes his old friend Joseph Pearce. They make the practical case for localism and "small is beautiful" economics, tell the story of a whole community rallying to save its butcher from the regulators, and then turn to the hardest question facing Catholic fathers right now: why are so many good young men being pulled toward online white nationalism, and what do we put in front of them instead?

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why "small is beautiful" isn't romantic nostalgia but a workable answer to big government and globalism, and what Pearce means when he says freedom is in your pocket
• What it actually looks like when neighbors organize to defend a local butcher against zoning boards and inspectors, and why real localism means getting your hands dirty
• How Pearce left the National Front and hardcore white nationalism behind for the Catholic faith, and why he understands the pull it still has on young men
• How the modern fixation on race grew out of the Enlightenment rather than Christianity, and why identitarianism takes root in fatherless, rootless young lives
• The remedy Craig and Pearce keep returning to: handing young men the wisdom of the ages and the Church instead of the loud, childless voices online, because the solid Christian family is the hearth of civilization

Resources Mentioned

• Fraternus
• The American Catholic Land Movement: Past, Present, and Future by Jason Craig & Jared Staudt
• "Race and Education" by Joseph Pearce (The Imaginative Conservative)
• Small Is Still Beautiful by Joseph Pearce
• Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher

Chapters

• 00:00: Welcome, Seersucker, and Backyard Poultry
• 04:52: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful, Made Flesh
• 06:11: "Small Is Still Beautiful" and Localist Economics
• 08:33: Freedom Is in Your Pocket, Every Dollar Is a Vote
• 16:38: The Butcher vs. the Regulators
• 36:46: Pearce's Radical Past as a "Serious Revolutionary"
• 41:02: "All the Young Men Are Nazis" and Online Identitarianism
• 44:19: Race as an Enlightenment Invention, Not a Christian One
• 52:49: Fatherlessness and the Real Hunger for Identity
• 1:08:54: Raising a Catholic Family, the Hearth of Civilization

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Joe Maki spent his working life in manufacturing—grinding, cutting, and polishing fake bones on a production floor—until his brother Mike told him to quit dreaming about laser-engraved tabletops and learn how to hold a tape measure. Two years later the table was finished. Six years ago, after his first child was born, he picked up clay for the first time since high school, and his first commission now hangs as the main altar crucifix in a church in Cleveland. In this conversation with Jason Craig, Joe argues that craft is a virtue before it is a skill, that artificial intelligence inverts the sacramental nature of the world, and that a man's vocation as husband and father has to outrank his vocation as an artist.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why the medievals saw almost no difference between building a table and painting an icon, and what was lost when "fine art" arrived in the eighteenth century
• What two weeks at a Benedictine monastery with no deadlines does to a workaholic, and why farmers keep the same clock the monks do
• The difference between making a beautiful cup and making a chalice, and why AI-generated art and AI-generated prayer fail on the same grounds
• Jacques Maritain's rope between the artist and God, and why pulling on it is supposed to hurt
• The warning a German priest gave Joe about liturgical art, and the practice of doing clay with his kids that came out of it

Resources Mentioned:

• Joe Maki's studio and shop
• The Way of the Rood: The Stations of the Cross, Composed in the Tradition of the Medieval Poem, The Dream of the Rood by Joe Maki
• Joe's Substack
• The Spiritual Combat and a Treatise on Peace of Soul by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
• The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Jason Craig and Thomas Van Horn
• Fraternus

Chapters:

• 00:00: The vocation that comes first
• 03:07: Fake bones, a giant laser, and a tape measure
• 07:35: The first crucifix, and a church made entirely custom
• 15:42: Art is a virtue, and a virtue is a habit
• 21:03: Monks, farmers, and the death of the deadline
• 27:29: A cup, a chalice, and a prayer written by a machine
• 32:06: Pulling on the rope: the tension of the artist
• 36:00: Artificial intelligence and the artificial world
• 44:51: "Don't do it"—a priest's warning to a young artist
• 01:08:53: The joy of building something together

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Marcellino D'Ambrosio, co-founder of Sherwood Fellows, joins Jason Craig to talk about what actually forms a man. Once the frontman of a punk band, Marcellino traces the ordeal that pulled him into seminary and then into marketing built on truth instead of manipulation. The conversation turns to the pattern of masculine initiation—danger, pain, and a father's blessing on the other side—and lands on a live example: how Catholic men in Irving, Texas organized to stop billionaire donors from building the world's largest casino next to their parish.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why every man needs a vision worth building, not just an enemy worth fighting
• The real story of how Catholic men in Irving, Texas stopped a casino from being built next to their parish
• What a punk band, seminary, and a hard conversation with his mother taught Marcellino about becoming a man
• Why physical conflict and danger still form men—and where Christ's example complicates the warrior model
• How the pattern of marking and blessing shapes a son, and why fathers keep missing the second hal

Resources Mentioned:

• Fraternus
• Sherwood Fellows
• Leaving Boyhood Behind: Reclaiming the Gift of Manhood and Traditional Rites of Passage by Jason Craig

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 03:19: Sherwood Fellows and Branding as an Argument
• 12:18: The Punk Band, the Conversion, and Seminary
• 20:05: What Seminary Got Wrong About Masculinity
• 31:12: Marking and Blessing: The Pattern of Initiation
• 33:21: The Case for Physical Conflict
• 44:05: Christ as Warrior and the Paradox of Christianity
• 48:30: Raising Sons for a More Dangerous World
• 59:15: How Irving Catholics Stopped the Casino
• 1:07:05: A Vision Worth Defending

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

Daniel Padrnos—co-founder of Supra Dinner Society and trained Tamada based in Seattle—joins Jason to explore the Georgian Supra: an ancient tradition of ritual feasting and toasting shaped by 1,700 years of Christian civilization in the Republic of Georgia. Daniel makes the case that hospitality is a distinctly masculine act and that the table your family already sits around is more powerful than you think.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• What the Georgian Supra is—its origins, its structure, and the role of the Tamada as the host who sees every person at the table and draws out the best in them
• Why ritual and shared etiquette don't constrain authentic encounter—they're the very conditions that make it possible
• How to give a good toast: what Daniel has learned from hundreds of Supras and from Georgian masters of the tradition
• The toast as a theological act: what Josef Pieper's philosophy of affirmation reveals about why men raise a glass
• How to bring the Supra into your home, your men's group, and your family table—and why it may recover a virtue men have abandoned

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 01:47: The Tamada and the Marekipe
• 03:57: "The Guest Is a Gift from God"
• 06:16: Ritual as the Condition for Real Connection
• 11:11: Inside a Supra: Themes, Structure, and Flow
• 15:08: How to Give a Good Toast
• 17:58: The Toast as Elevation and Affirmation
• 27:20: Masculine Hospitality and the Tamada as Head
• 40:20: Brotherhood, Family Supras, and Training Tamadas
• 44:21: Leadership Means Pouring Out

Resources Mentioned:

• Supra Dinner Society
• Fraternus

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

James Taylor Foreman is a writer, the voice behind The Metaphor on Substack, and a contributor to Sword & Spade magazine. In this conversation with Jason Craig, James traces his journey from being born Catholic, through years as an atheist, and back to the Catholic Church — and the more personal story underneath: a recurring dream, a two-week wedding, and a move back to Louisiana to finish the house his father left incomplete.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How reading Aquinas, Augustine, and Athanasius made James's conversion to Catholicism intellectually inevitable and what both Protestants and materialists have in common when they skip everything between Aristotle and Kant
• The two-week wedding, the relocation to Louisiana, and why time pressure sometimes produces more beauty than years of planning ever could
• Walker Percy, Louisiana Catholic culture, and the tragedy of a people who possessed one of the richest Catholic inheritances in America and nearly let it rot from the inside
• Abstraction as the defining spiritual disorder of modernity — what it is, why it fuels everything from addiction to political outrage, and why embodiment is the only real remedy
• Right relationship with technology: why the tools that "disappear" are more dangerous than the ones we can see, and what it means to be a faithful steward rather than a tool yourself

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction and James's Background
•  06:02: From Louisiana Catholic to Teenage Atheist
•  08:40: A Slow Conversion, the Presbyterian Church, and the Church Fathers
•  14:45: Meeting Riley and the Two-Week Wedding
•  21:56: Finishing His Father's House in Louisiana
•  27:28: Walker Percy, St. Francisville, and Louisiana
•  34:58: What We Squandered: Retention, the Dance Hall, and Louisiana Catholic Culture
•  42:20: Walker Percy and the Problem of Despair
•  43:43: Abstraction, Embodiment, and Escaping Yourself
•  54:14: Right Relationship with Technology: The Tools That Disappear

Resources Mentioned:

• The Metaphor by James Taylor Foreman
• Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy
• Morning Offering with Fr. Brad Doyle

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Devin Schadt, founder and executive director of Fathers of St. Joseph, joins Jason Craig to trace the wounds men carry into marriage, the spirituality of St. Joseph, and what it actually means to be a son of God the Father. Drawing on his own story—a difficult childhood, a broken early fatherhood, and a daughter's life-threatening premature birth that cracked everything open—Devin unpacks why men chase the world's validation, what it costs them, and how God the Father offers something far better. This is an hour for any man still trying to earn what he can only receive.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How to recognize the Six P's of the world's path (prestige, prominence, power, profit, possessions, pleasure) and stop letting worldly validation drive your identity as a husband and father
• Why the wounds from your own father don't have to define your fatherhood—and what it looks like when a man finally lets God the Father in
• The one thing every son needs his father to initiate—and how to make sure your boys aren't still searching for it at 40
• The difference between servile faith and filial faith, and why moving from slave to son is the hinge point of a man's entire spiritual life
• The Four P's of God's testing (pain, personal poverty, patience, perseverance) and how to stop running from suffering and start letting it make you the father your family needs

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 03:00: Twenty Years His Own Boss—Then a Desperate Prayer Changed Everything
• 08:27: The Danger of Counting Your Fruit
• 11:31: The Six P's: Seeking Validation in the Wrong Places
• 13:48: Jesus in the Desert: Identity, Not Performance
• 21:52: What Devin's Father Gave—and Couldn't Give
• 26:38: The Father's Job: Choosing His Son
• 33:32: The One Thing: Relationship with God the Father
• 44:37: Servile Faith vs. Filial Faith
• 55:34: The Four P's: Pain, Poverty, Patience, Perseverance

Resources Mentioned:

• Fathers of St. Joseph
• Fraternus

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

In a world engineered to keep men indoors and inside their heads, philosopher and author Sebastian Morello—student of the late Roger Scruton and author of The Woodland Philosophy—argues that the path back to reality, to genuine culture, and to God runs through the wild. Drawing on a life of fox hunting, deer stalking, and spearfishing, Sebastian makes the moral and philosophical case that the huntsman is not a relic but a model. He is one of the few men left who still lives in right relation with the created order.

If you've ever suspected that something essential has been lost in modernity and that the fix won't come from a screen, this conversation is for you.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How Sebastian came under the mentorship of Roger Scruton—and why that relationship changed his philosophy, his faith, and his life outdoors
• Why hunters and small farmers develop a deeper moral bond with animals than any Disney-fied conservationist ever could
• The difference between a mechanistic and an organicist worldview—and why it explains everything wrong with modern politics, land management, and culture
• Why recovering Catholic culture requires men to first recover their bodies, their places, and their patient relation to the land
• Practical advice for the man who wants to become a huntsman and why no amount of YouTube videos can replace a real mentor

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 07:19: Meeting Roger Scruton and the meaning of mentorship
• 12:13: Why hunt? The philosopher's question
• 18:55: Modernity's disease—ideology, atomism, and lost reality
• 26:07: The hunter's moral relation with his quarry
• 33:27: Conservation and the attack on rural England
• 47:49: Organicist vs. mechanistic—two visions of the world
• 59:19: Recovering culture—becoming bodies again
• 01:08:15: Why mentorship cannot be replaced
• 01:15:41: Brotherhood forged through the hunt

Resources Mentioned:

• The Woodland Philosophy by Sebastian Morello
• On Hunting by Roger Scruton
• Persons: The Difference Between Someone and Something by Robert Spaemann
• Fraternus

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.

The men who shaped you left you something—a set of stories, images, and convictions you draw on long after they're gone. Dr. Jason Baxter, Dante scholar and author of The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis and Why Literature Still Matters, joins Jason Craig to make the case that literature is the hidden architecture of masculine formation—and that fathers who neglect it are leaving their sons with less than they think. This is a conversation for every father who wants to give his children more than rules.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why a father alone is never enough—and how the men who surrounded Dr. Baxter as a boy shaped him in ways his own father couldn't
• What an all-boys classroom reveals about how young men actually learn, compete, and form brotherhood—and what co-education quietly costs them
• How fathers can take an active role in courtship culture, not as enforcers but as patrons who set the stage for their daughters and the men around them
• Why the "invisible library" a man builds through literature is the very thing he'll reach for when a friend's marriage is falling apart and platitudes won't do
• How the medieval integration of beauty, ethics, science, and poetry offers a richer model of formation than any list of commandments—and what that means for how we raise our sons

Chapters:

• 00:00: Introduction
• 03:49: Introducing Dr. Jason Baxter
• 06:55: The Men Who Made Him
• 18:52: Boys, Girls, and the Classroom
• 27:06: Fathers, Courtship, and the Dating Market
• 36:41: Why Literature Still Matters
• 48:27: The Medieval Mind: Integration vs. Fragmentation
• 01:02:08: Marriage as the School of Manhood
• 01:09:46: Forming the Imagination at Home
• 01:13:29: The Invisible Library

Resources Mentioned:

• A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy by Jason M. Baxter
• The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis by Jason M. Baxter
• Why Literature Still Matters by Jason M. Baxter
• The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han
• JasonMBaxter.com

JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios