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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What should philosophy do? Despite record numbers of practitioners, today the discipline is in crisis, awash in abstraction and increasingly isolated—even within the academy.

But there’s a way out, argues veteran philosopher Philip Kitcher. It starts with attending to the ordinary concerns of human life, then illuminating them with clear, rigorous thought. 

On this episode, Kitcher speaks with Commonweal features editor Alex Stern about Kitcher’s most recent book, What’s the Use of Philosophy? 

Plus, in anticipation of Commonweal’s centennial in 2024, we’re featuring a special segment by contributor Kate Lucky on author Marilynne Robinson’s understanding of “true community.”

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At first glance, John West’s Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery is an unconventional memoir about addiction and the healing power of community. 

But it also addresses the challenges of belief today, when almost everything—the nation, religious institutions, the environment—appears on the verge of collapse.

On this episode, West speaks with associate editor Griffin Oleynick about the paradoxes of autobiographical narrative, grief and loss, and the power of art. 

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Is single-payer health care really feasible in America? For one Texas physician, the answer is an unqualified ‘yes.’

On this episode, Commonweal associate editor Regina Munch speaks with Ricardo Nuila, an internist at Houston’s Ben Taub hospital and author of the new book The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine. 

Then, as Commonweal approaches its centennial in 2024, we’re featuring brief reflections on writers we’ve published since our founding. Here, associate editor Griffin Oleynick reflects on the spiritual writing of the late John Garvey.

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