Last month’s Synod on Synodality in Rome is perhaps one of the most important ecclesial gatherings to take place since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. But what exactly happened remains unclear. 

On this episode, Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi is joined by two experts on Vatican affairs to help explain and contextualize the synod’s work. 

Paul Elie is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center and a regular contributor to Commonweal and the New Yorker, which sent him to Rome for a week to report on the synod. 

Anna Rowlands, Professor of Catholic Social Thought at Durham University in the United Kingdom, helped draft the synod’s working documents and served as an observer and expert theological advisor in the synod hall. 

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Today, the political and social philosophy known as liberalism—which champions democracy, individual rights, and free enterprise—is on the defensive. 

Conservatives often charge it with eroding community, while some progressives view it as a justification for economic exploitation.

On this episode, Yale political theorist Samuel Moyn, author of the new book Liberalism against Itself, joins features editor Alex Stern to discuss the debates that surrounded liberalism during the Cold War. 

Instead of a narrow liberalism that focuses on individual liberties, Moyn argues that a broader, more expansive view of the idea is possible—one that retrieves the original Enlightenment emphasis on egalitarianism and emancipation. 

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Dead Man Walking, based on the acclaimed memoir by Sr. Helen Prejean, may be the world’s most popular contemporary opera. But it had never before been performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City—until now. 

On this special episode, in anticipation of the Met Opera’s Live-in-HD broadcast in cinemas on October 21, host Dominic Preziosi is joined by bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who plays the condemned murderer Joseph DeRocher, and Sr. Helen Prejean herself. 

Together, they discuss the significance of this new production of Dead Man Walking, and why its message of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption continues to resonate with audiences today.

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With its frequent earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, and other maladies, California is no stranger to environmental disaster. But in the long run, even these highly visible effects of climate change pale in comparison to the looming threat of sea-level rise. 

On this episode, Commonweal’s Claudia Avila Cosnahan, a resident of southern California, speaks with Rosanna Xia, an environmental reporter at the LA Times. 

Xia’s new book California Against the Sea blends traditional reportage with an unconventional and important perspective on concepts like “managed retreat,” climate resilience, and what it means to listen to and even love the ocean itself. 

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The fact that nearly 40 million Americans live in poverty is a national embarrassment. But it’s also a choice. If poverty exists, it’s because we “wish and will it to.”

That’s the thesis of Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, who joins Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi to discuss Desmond’s recent book Poverty, By America. 

We don’t need to capitulate to the ultra-wealthy or the corporations hoarding resources, Desmond argues. Instead, we can change the way we shop, work, and vote not just to alleviate poverty, but to eradicate it completely. 

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The 2016 presidential election brought “fake news” to the center of national debates over media bias, election interference, free speech, and content moderation. But the phenomenon isn’t exactly new.

Misleading stories, sensationalism, and outright lies, explains Andie Tucher, have been part of American journalism from the very beginning. 

A professor at Columbia Journalism School, Tucher is also the author of Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History.

On this episode, Tucher joins Commonweal features editor Alex Stern to discuss how lessons from the history of journalism in America can help reform the profession in the age of the internet, social media, and AI.

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John McPhee is widely regarded as America’s most prolific nonfiction author. Over a career spanning seven decades, McPhee has written more than thirty books, elucidating everything from shipping and boatbuilding to geology, engineering, and aviation. 

On this episode, McPhee joins contributing writer Tony Domestico to discuss his latest book, Tabula Rasa, Vol. I, a series of short vignettes about “desk drawer projects”—pieces that McPhee started, but never finished. 

McPhee stresses that when it comes to good writing, authorial ego must be put aside. Instead, it’s the work—the writing process and the humble attention to the subject—that matters. 

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Religious life stands in radical opposition to much of modern culture. But what is it, exactly? 

On this episode, philosopher Zena Hitz speaks with senior editor Matt Boudway about her new book on religious life—a crucial part of the Catholic Church, and one that remains poorly understood. 

Religious life is not primarily about what you give up, Hitz explains. Rather, it’s a way of orienting your whole self around a single purpose: loving God, and serving God’s people. 

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The border is a place, but it is also a metaphor: for our complicated personal identities and political allegiances, and for the moral claims made on us by those born on the other side. 

On this episode, interpreter and activist Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration, shares insights from her work with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Plus, in anticipation of Commonweal’s upcoming centennial, Nicole-Ann Lobo offers a short reflection on the Christian socialism of the late Dominican priest Herbert McCabe. 

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Though you’ve probably never heard of him, book editor Eugene Exman (1900–1975) exerted tremendous influence on the shape of American religion in the twentieth century. 

On this episode, special projects editor Miles Doyle speaks with Stephen Prothero, author of the new Exman biography God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion One Book at a Time.

Prothero explains how Exman’s relationships with religious leaders like Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. helped shift American religious discourse away from denominational boundaries and toward a more personal, individual experience of God.

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