The 2024 Paris Olympics have brought massive investment to the City of Light, including the construction of new housing, sports facilities, and public transportation. 

Yet we shouldn’t let that obscure a more sinister phenomenon: gentrification, which has rapidly transformed many of the city’s former immigrant and working-class strongholds into expensive quarters for the newly affluent. 

On this episode, Commonweal senior editor Matt Boudway speaks with journalist Cole Stangler, author of Paris Is Not Dead: Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light.

Stangler, who lives in France, explains Paris’s historical transformation, as well as more recent developments in French politics. 

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Alim Braxton, a convicted murderer who admits his guilt, has been incarcerated in North Carolina prison for more than thirty years, spending seven years in solitary confinement and many more on death row.

He was once hopeless, but after his conversion to Islam many years ago, he began working for redemption by advocating for prison reform and the exoneration of innocent inmates. 

Braxton is also a rapper, and just released his first album, along with a book, Rap and Redemption on Death Row, co-written with UNC Chapel Hill musicologist Mark Katz. 

On this special episode, Commonweal’s Claudia Avila Cosnahan speaks with both Braxton and Katz about Braxton’s spiritual and artistic journey.

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Egalitarianism remains one of the core tenets of most liberals and progressives. But does the idea that everyone ought to be equal in the sphere of political economy also hold true for the realm of culture? 

Absolutely not, argues Becca Rothfeld, nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post and author of the debut collection All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess. The modern insistence that all cultural objects are “equal” is actually a symptom of our failure to create a society in which genuine equality is present. 

That, Rothfeld insists, is why we need more of everything—more personhood, more sincerity, more critical judgment, and even more chaos. It’s the only way to overcome the ascendance of anodyne minimalism that has stifled contemporary culture. 

On this episode, Rothfeld joins Commonweal senior editor Matthew Boudway to discuss her book, medieval mysticism, and more. 

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In the past, having kids was simply taken for granted. It was just a thing a person did, like going to college or getting a job.

But now, in the face of rising costs and environmental degradation, more and more millennials and zoomers are questioning whether they should become parents at all.

On this episode, Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi is joined by Rachel Wiseman and Anastasia Berg, editors at The Point and co-authors of What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice. 

They explain (and lament) how having kids has become so highly politicized in our culture, and offer suggestions for how to make better decisions about becoming a parent.  

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Can trees ‘hear’? Can flowers ‘see’? Are shrubs ‘intelligent’?

A decade ago, these questions might have seemed absurd. But an emerging scientific consensus posits that plants are much more like animals than previously thought. 

On this episode, managing editor Isa Simon speaks with Zoë Schlanger, a staff writer and science reporter at The Atlantic and author of The Light Eaters.

Schlanger shows how the study of plants—and the wonder their behaviors inspire—can offer a welcome alternative to the despair induced by climate change.  

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One of the misconceptions about Judaism is that the religion is concerned primarily with justice and the law, not love and grace. 

That’s precisely backward, argues Rabbi Shai Held, president and dean of the Hadar Institute in New York and author of the new book Judaism Is About Love. Jewish theology, spirituality, and ethics emerge as free responses to a generous, loving God.

On this episode, Held speaks with associate editor Griffin Oleynick about how recovering this more accurate view of Judaism can help believers and non-believers alike lead richer, fuller, more joyful lives.

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For decades, discussions of poverty and inequality in America have tended to focus on cities. That’s understandable—cities are often the places where income disparities are most visible. 

But as poverty researchers Kathryn Edin, H. Luke Schaefer, and Timothy Nelson argue in their recent book The Injustice of Place, traditional income-based indicators of poverty can mask the “deep disadvantage” faced by rural communities across the country. 

On this episode, they join associate editor Regina Munch to discuss how centuries of resource extraction, racism, and “internal colonization” have blocked the advancement of regions like Appalachia, southern Texas, and the “cotton belt” from sharing in American prosperity. 

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Vinson Cunningham is one of the most dynamic critics working today. Best known as the New Yorker’s theater critic and co-host of the weekly podcast Critics at Large, he’s also the author of the novel Great Expectations, based on his experience working for the Obama campaign in 2008.

On this episode, Cunningham joins Commonweal contributing writer Anthony Domestico for a discussion about criticism—engaging deeply with a work of art on a personal level, and then responding in writing and speech—as a way of life. Along the way, they also touch on the theological dimensions of Great Expectations.

Anybody, Cunningham argues, can be a critic. All it takes is curiosity, and the willingness to share your observations with others. 

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We’re all familiar with the tired stereotype of the “God of the Old Testament,” a capricious creator Who subjects His chosen people to endless cycles of punishment and retribution. 

But in her reading of the Book of Genesis, novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson describes a God of gentleness, one wildly in love with creation and humanity.

In this special episode of the Commonweal Podcast, moderated by senior editor Matt Boudway, poet and memoirist Christian Wiman joins Robinson for a conversation about the Book of Genesis. 

Robinson and Wiman also discuss scripture and theology more generally—especially as the two practice it through fiction and poetry. 

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The past year or so hasn’t been the best one for higher education. Debates over affirmative action, free speech, and affordability, combined with recent cuts to the humanities, have led many to wonder what the future holds. 

Here to speak about all of this is Nicholas Dirks, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and author of City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University. 

Dirks argues that we certainly need structural change. Even more important is that colleges and universities return to their core functions: the pursuit of free inquiry, reasoning about fundamental human values, and training future generations of engaged citizens. 

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