The PloughCast

Susannah Black Roberts, Peter Mommsen, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic talk about Yoram Hazony’s National Conservative Statement of Principles, John Milbank’s Open Letter, and what postliberalism means.

They talk about what the NatCon statement implies about what state power should be used for, and then find themselves discussing abortion, and the future of the country given the profound differences that exist.

They talk about whether ...

Peter and Susannah discuss with L. M. Sacasas the perils and promise of technology: how it shapes our lives and how it changes how we think about ourselves.

Will artificial intelligence become sentient? How will we understand ourselves if we believe they are sentient? What can we do about it, and how can we live in a more human and embodied world?

Then, Peter and Susannah take listener questions. How can we go about living in a socie...

Peter and Susannah talk with Christopher Tollefsen about his piece on the history and ethics of nuclear deterrence, and the prospect of an antinuclear movement post-Ukraine. They discuss Tollefsen’s conviction that nuclear war is a life issue.

Then, they speak with Samuel Moyn about his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Is making war more “humane” actually removing the urgency of actual pacif...

Peter and Susannah welcome Kim Comer, the editor of Plough’s European edition, and discuss the origins of the new Bruderhof communities in Austria. Welcomed by Cardinal Schönborn as part of the healing of the schisms of the Reformation, these communities are thriving.

This leads them to the question of how past wrongs can be healed in general: how can we get past the “sins of the fathers?” Not by denying those fathers and not by wal...

Hope in Apocalypse, Part 3: Peter and Susannah talk with demographer Lyman Stone about falling birthrates and what humans need to thrive enough to have children.

They discuss Thomas Malthus and the origin of the European demographic transition, as well as the origin of overpopulation fears, and about how those fears misunderstand the nature of human ingenuity.

They cover the essential racism of so much “overpopulation” discourse, whi...