Religion and public life, argued seriously.
First Things Podcast is an interview-led companion to First Things Magazine, built around essays, books, lectures, and public controversies. Its conversations move carefully from definitions and arguments into moral, theological, legal, and civic consequences.
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First Things Podcast brings the magazine’s religious and public-intellectual sensibility into long-form conversation. It is not a quick opinion show. Episodes tend to begin at the editor’s desk, with an essay, review, book, or lecture placed on the table for examination. From there, the conversation works by definition, distinction, and pressure. What is admiration? What is disclosure? What does hospitality require? What happens when church policy responds to crisis through law alone? Those questions give the show its shape. The range is broad, but the center holds: Christianity, public life, moral formation, and the fate of institutions under modern pressure. A discussion of Ryan Burge’s book on moderate congregations becomes a dispute over mainline decline, evangelical pressures, gender, sex, polarization, and the pastor’s duty to preach the gospel. A conversation with Michael Mazza about the Dallas Charter considers abuse, law, suspicion, episcopal authority, priestly morale, and whether a crisis produced policies that now need repair. Literary episodes are just as central to the show’s public vision. Glenn Arbery’s account of lyric disclosure opens onto phenomenology, Wordsworth, Richard Wilbur, praise, and the possibility that poetry can reveal rather than merely decorate. Elizabeth Corey’s essay on admiration leads into connoisseurship, disenchantment, universities, Christian virtue, and the desire to become better by seeing excellence clearly. Spencer Klavan’s discussion of Aeneas and Virgil becomes a reflection on founding, sovereignty, citizenship, Rome, Dante, and America’s need to understand itself. The show also makes room for lectures and legal conversations, including Mary Harrington on metaphysical crisis and Alan Dershowitz on preventing serious harms while preserving essential liberties. Its pace is measured. Its habits are analytical. It can be grave, warm, dry, or sharply corrective, but it rarely chases outrage for its own sake. The distinctive pleasure is hearing public controversy pulled back into older categories: grace, duty, truth, law, praise, divinity, and moral obligation.
Made for: For listeners who want Christian public commentary with theological, legal, literary, and classical depth. It especially suits readers of essays and books who prefer careful argument over quick reaction.
What sets it apart: The show ties contemporary controversies to older moral and metaphysical categories without flattening them into party politics. Its interviewer shapes the exchange through summary, challenge, and definition rather than letting guests simply lecture.
First Things is America's most influential journal of religion & public life.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Rusty Reno traces public controversies back to the religious, moral, and civic premises that give them force.
Rusty Reno turns First Things essays into searching conversations about the moral ideas underneath public life. Speaking with each article's author, he begins with definitions and premises, then presses toward consequences for institutions, citizenship, family life, and…
At Rusty Reno's desk, even Elon Musk's family tree asks you what children are for.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sober look at church decline, polarization, and what pastors are actually for.
Rusty Reno and Brad East spend much of the conversation on Ryan Burge's The Vanishing Church, but the more pointed thread is how religious decline is filtered through political and ecclesial strain.
A measured case for keeping crisis-era abuse policy from hardening into permanent governance.
Michael Mazza and Rusty Reno use this conversation to weigh the Dallas Charter, the U.S. bishops' 2002 response to the abuse crisis, and the harder question that follows: what happens when crisis rules become lasting governance.
A measured PlayNext review of poetry as disclosure, vocation, and praise.
This PlayNext review follows a conversation about Glenn Arbery's March 2026 essay, Lyric as Disclosure, and gives its central distinction a clean shape.
A grounded case for admiration as disciplined attention and a desire for Christian virtue.
Admiration becomes the thread in Rusty Reno's conversation with Elizabeth Corey about her February 2026 First Things essay, The Pleasure of Admiring.
Virgil's Aeneid becomes a discussion of founding, duty, sovereignty, and citizenship.
Rusty Reno and Spencer Klavan use Virgil's Aeneid to work through founding, duty, sovereignty, and citizenship. The conversation starts with Klavan's February 2026 piece on Aeneas and the basic question of who he is, then moves into the poem's larger movement: a Trojan pulled…
A pointed conversation about singleness, individualism, and contested visions of family life.
On The Editor's Desk, Rusty Reno and Daryl Paul use Paul's essay "Feminism Against Fertility" to think through the post-election image of boys cheering and girls crying.
Musk becomes a test case for family, selection, and modern fertility.
First Things uses its conversation with Matthew Schmitz to frame Elon Musk as a test case for family values, selection, and modern fertility. It moves from rockets, Tesla, and SpaceX to IVF and embryo screening, and it lingers on the unsettling idea of children as a product of…
Spiritual calculation meets cultural correction.
Sam Harris interviews scientists and journalists on AI risk, religion, and US politics.
WSJ reporters unpack the Epstein files, surrogacy industry abuses, and true-crime court battles.
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway argue through tech, media, and Trump-era politics twice weekly.
Dan Carlin's solo essays connecting executive power, historical collapse, and American democracy.
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz discusses his new book 'The Preventive State' and explores the challenge of preventing serious threats like terrorism while preserving essential civil liberties.
Rusty Reno interviews Darel E.
Rusty Reno interviews Matthew Schmitz about his article 'Elon's Family Values' from the April 2025 issue of First Things Magazine.
David Reif discusses his new book 'Desire and Fate', analyzing the current cultural revolution characterized by woke identitarianism and its contradictory synthesis compared to historical revolutions like Maoist China.
Rusty Reno opens the conversation with Brad East by focusing on East's review of Ryan Burge's The Vanishing Church.
Rusty Reno welcomes Michael Mazza to talk about Where the Dallas Charter Went Wrong.
On The Editor's Desk, Rusty Reno and Glenn Arbery unpack 'Lyric as Disclosure' through Father Sokolowski's distinction between 'truth of correctness' and 'truth of disclosure.' Arbery uses Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro,' William Carlos Williams' 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' Edmund Waller's 'Go, lovely rose,' and Wordsworth's daffodils to show lyric as direct seeing.
This episode features an introduction to Mary Harrington's lecture titled 'Our Crisis is Metaphysical,' highlighting her background as a writer and feral academic.
This episode features an interview with Matthew Crawford discussing his essay on the classical ethic of hospitality in the context of mass migration.
Rusty Reno talks with Elizabeth Corey about her February 2026 First Things essay, "The Pleasure of Admiring," on the First Things podcast.
Rusty Reno welcomes Spencer Claven to the editor's desk.
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz discusses his new book 'The Preventive State' about balancing the prevention of serious threats like terrorism with the preservation of essential civil liberties.
The hosts discuss and compare the 2024 film Conclave and the 2017 HBO series The Young Pope, analyzing their portrayals of the papacy and Catholic themes while sharing their hopes and anxieties about the church.
This episode discusses the gender politics revealed by the 2024 election fallout, focusing on how younger men and women are drifting apart in Western societies.