Catholic music, ministry, and repair.
Interchange centers generous conversations with guests working around Catholic worship. Its best episodes linger over formation, culture, trauma, family, and song, letting personal history become the doorway into larger questions of faith and responsibility.
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Interchange is a warm, interview-driven show where Catholic music and liturgy open onto larger questions of formation, culture, trauma, and belonging. It has a recognizable rhythm. Kate Williams welcomes a guest, gives the relationship or biography room to breathe, and then follows the conversation toward the deeper pastoral question beneath the stated topic. Some episodes begin with hymnals, publishing, parish music, or conference life. They often end somewhere more intimate. A conversation about Tu Pueblo Canta becomes a reflection on Spanish-language worship, committee labor, relief, pride, and the dignity of communities hearing themselves fully represented. An episode with Santiago Fernandez moves through Hispanic liturgical music and multicultural pastoral work. A conversation with Father Ricky Manalo, CSP reaches from composition and theology to Asian-American Catholic life, Simbang Gabi, bishops’ conference work, and creation in an age of AI. The show can also sit with difficult material. Natalie Pucillo speaks from the perspective of survivor advocacy and trauma-informed pastoral practice, with attention to abuse in Catholic settings and the responsibility adults carry around young people. Emily Bradfield brings branding language into a conversation shaped by Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the need for safe company. Stephanie Fiorentino connects music, food, shame, intuitive eating, and disordered eating without reducing the subject to wellness slogans. David Dalt and Mark Miller bring spiritual direction, Christian spirituality, sacred music, family, adoption, and faith journeys into the same spacious register. Interchange is strongest when it lets guests speak at length and trusts that biography, vocation, and theology belong together. It is not fast. It is not built for hot takes. Its appeal is the way it treats church work as human work: musical, embodied, wounded, joyful, unfinished, and still worth singing about.
Made for: Interchange suits listeners connected to Catholic liturgy, parish music, pastoral ministry, theology, and church-adjacent care work. It is especially fitting for people who prefer slow, relational interviews over quick commentary.
What sets it apart: The show treats liturgical music as a living pastoral practice rather than a niche repertoire. Its conversations make room for hymnals, culture, trauma, family, food, abuse prevention, and spiritual formation without forcing them into separate boxes.
A monthly podcast from GIA Music, hosted by Kate Williams
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Kate Williams connects Catholic worship to the human work of making music, shaping participation, and sustaining communities.
Interchange treats liturgy as something made by bodies, voices, communities, and practical decisions. In conversations with musicians, clergy, writers, and educators, Kate Williams keeps sacred music connected to the people singing it and the conditions under which worship…
Church music meets body of Christ soup, and Kate Williams keeps you laughing through the liturgical logistics.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm, plainspoken look at a long-awaited Spanish-language hymnal.
The episode treats the first all-Spanish-language hardbound hymnal as a real working achievement, not a headline grab. It stays close to the committee labor, the page layout, and the care behind a book meant for Hispanic communities.
A careful episode on belonging, abuse, and the adult responsibility to make room for truth and healing.
Interchange examines the uneasy overlap between belonging and harm through Natalie Pucillo's account of surviving abuse by a lay minister. Her background in Catholic liturgy, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and trauma-informed pastoral practice gives the episode a steady…
A patient, reflective conversation about faith, belonging, and a religious journey shaped by study, sunrise, and invitation.
David Dalt's movement from Quaker life toward Catholicism gives this Interchange conversation a clear center, but the episode is less interested in conversion as a tidy arc than in faith as something recognized over time.
A patient conversation linking liturgy, culture, and music without hurrying the point.
Ricky Manalo and Kate Williams make an easy, careful conversation out of a subject that could have felt cramped. The early stretch is light on its feet, then it gets more specific once Manalo talks about learning Asian-American Catholicism more deliberately after his work with…
A warm look at how a city-sized liturgy became a moment of joy, memory, and faith.
The piece works best when it keeps the Chicago church story grounded in people rather than occasion. A hometown pope, a celebratory liturgy, and the committee behind it give the story shape, while the weather nerves, civic surprise, and the practical work of making a public Mass…
Children make music, faith, and bedtime sound like parts of the same conversation.
Kate Williams spends this Interchange with a roomful of children asking what music, God, and church sound like when nobody is trying too hard.
A patient conversation about mental health, ministry, and the limits of willpower.
Kate Williams and Father Stuart Wilson-Smith keep the discussion grounded in Mental Health Awareness Month and the strain of trying to look well.
A thoughtful conversation about liturgy, repertoire, and the limits of church song.
Hilary Donaldson comes across as a church musician and researcher in Toronto, with the conversation staying focused on music, liturgy, and the spaces between congregational expectations and lived reality.
Headlines through Israel, scripture, and testimony.
Christian recovery counsel for men doing the work.
Christian systems critique across scripture and civilization.
A long-secret Spanish-language hymnal is finally ready.
Interchange host Kate Williams interviews Natalie Pucillo, a Loyola University Chicago Master of Divinity student, church musician, and AWAKE Survivor Resource Intern, about sexual abuse in Catholic communities.
Interchange host Kate Williams interviews David Dalt, a Loyola University spiritual-direction leader, award-winning screenwriter, media producer, and contributor to multiple podcasts.
A well-traveled Paulist settles in.
Host Kate Williams interviews Santiago Fernandez, an experienced parish music minister and liturgical music expert, about his work in Hispanic liturgical music and cultural integration.
Host Kate Williams interviews her sister Emily Bradfield, a brand communications manager, about branding, music, liturgy, and domestic violence awareness in the context of church leadership.
This episode features a conversation with Mark Miller, a minister of music and professor, discussing music, liturgy, and personal journeys in faith and adoption.
A dietitian discusses her shift from traditional wellness to intuitive eating, focusing on improving one's relationship with food.
Interchange’s "Habemus Homerun!" centers on a committee reflecting on the celebratory Mass for Pope Leo XIV at Raitt Field in Chicago, including Kate Williams, Sam Polo, Matt Merkt, Michael Ward, and Peter Kolar.
Kate Williams sits down with a room full of kids after the GIA Summer Music Institute opening.
Kate Williams welcomes Father Stu with care.
Host Kate Williams interviews Adam Tice about his work in congregational song and the intersection of music and liturgy.
Hilary Donaldson starts with church and the body.
This episode explores the intersection of music, faith, and liturgy through the Black Catholic experience, featuring experts in African American religious thought and music.
A conversation about music and liturgy hosted by Kate Williams, featuring composer and theology professor Tony Alonzo.
A reflection on the Advent season leading to the celebration of Christ's birth, with a call to sing praise to God.
A reflection on a psalm during Advent, urging listeners to turn toward God amid waiting and distractions.
A devotional reflection on a psalm of joy and expectation during the Advent season, emphasizing God's presence.
A reflection on singing a new song to God, connecting ancient psalms to modern worship and the Magnificat.
A reflection on Psalm 126, exploring the interplay of sorrow and joy in daily life through a spiritual lens.
Host Kate Williams interviews Michael Silhavy about his background in Catholic education and work at GIA Publications, setting up a discussion on the generational divide in music and liturgy.
A reflective prayer and meditation on seeking God's path during the Advent season, referencing biblical figures and themes of salvation.
Host Kate Williams interviews Diana McAlintle about her journey from childhood piano lessons and dreams of rock stardom to her work in music ministry and composition.
Host Kate Williams interviews negotiation expert Bob Bourdone about improving communication and resolving conflicts between music directors and clergy in church settings.
Host Kate Williams and colleagues discuss the importance of Spanish and bilingual resources in liturgical music, exploring the question of why they do this work.
Host Kate Williams interviews Jennifer Odegaard about her career in sacred music publishing and the merger of World Library with GIA.
Kate Williams talks with writer Madison Chastain, who grew up as a military brat in Charleston, South Carolina, just outside Sydney, Australia, and Northern California before moving to Hyde Park for the University of Chicago Divinity School.
A conversation about the spiritual and liturgical role of music in Christian worship, exploring how music connects to the divine and supports faith in difficult moments.