Uncommon Sense - The Official Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Society of G.K. Chesterton
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The Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, where we talk about everything under the sun with a Chestertonian perspective, as well as the writings and legacy of G.K. Chesterton himself. The podcast is hosted by Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski. Want to give us feedback? Email podcast@chesterton.org.

  1. 2d ago

    G.K. Chesterton on the Death of Literacy

    div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 [&_>_*:last-child]:mb-0 print:block print:[&_>_*_+_*]:mt-3 standard-markdown"> A new Atlantic cover story argues that America is sliding into a postliterate age—but G.K. Chesterton diagnosed the same collapse in 1928, years before Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman raised the alarm. Joe Grabowski goes solo to walk through Rose Horowitch's statistics on the death of reading, then turns to two Illustrated London News essays in which Chesterton describes a public that has stopped reading connected prose and now only kisses books it has never opened. What emerges is a practical challenge for anyone who wants to recover the habit Chesterton simply assumed his own readers still had. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton said so little about illiteracy—and what that silence reveals about how genuinely new this problem is Chesterton's 1928 warning that making reading "easier" signals a slump in reading rather than a boom What Chesterton meant by a public relapsing into the horn book and the cat on the mat—and why Joe Grabowski thinks he would have said much the same of reels, Shorts, and TikTok The 1921 essay in which Chesterton argued that the books shaping the world are the ones nobody has actually opened: Darwin, Marx, and the rumor that replaces the text Why Chesterton's critique lands on podcast listeners too—the risk of becoming the very type of person Chesterton described, taking opinions secondhand from influencers and favorite podcasters Resources Mentioned: "The End of Reading Is Here" by Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic "On Reading, and Not Being Able To," The Illustrated London News, December 8, 1928 What Mr. Belloc's Servile State Means by G. K. Chesterton FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop   Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios Chapters: 00:00: Introduction—A Crisis Worth Paying Attention To 04:20: The Atlantic Article: Rose Horowitch on the End of Reading 06:42: The Numbers—Who Still Reads, and How Little 09:06: Schools, Screens, and the Warnings of McLuhan and Postman 11:29: Why It Matters: Media Literacy in an Age of AI 13:56: If No One Reads, Who Wants to Write? 16:19: Writers Come from Readers 18:31: Turning to G.K. Chesterton and His 1928 Essay on Reading 23:20: Newsprint Headlines, Reels, and the Attention Economy 25:38: The 1921 Essay—The Books the World Has Not Read 30:07: An Examination of Conscience 32:33: The Challenge: Take the Book Down off the Shelf

    G.K. Chesterton on the Death of Literacy

  2. Jul 21

    The Chestertonian Writer on the Road to Canonization

    On the heels of the announcement that Sigrid Undset's cause for canonization has been opened, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski consider the Nobel laureate through the lens of G.K. Chesterton—the writer she admired, collected, and translated into Norwegian before visiting him at his home in Beaconsfield. Received into the Church just two years after G.K. Chesterton, Undset shared his conviction that sanctity belongs to the ordinary life of the laity, and her vivid portraits of medieval saints carry the same paradoxical spirit that made Chesterton's own work startle and delight. In This Episode: How Sigrid Undset's path into the Church paralleled G.K. Chesterton's—two converts of the same era drawn by the medieval and the Baroque Why G.K. Chesterton and Undset both located holiness in the vocation of the laity rather than the cloister The debt Undset owed to writers in G.K. Chesterton's orbit—Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World and the English Catholic revival Undset's translation of G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man into Norwegian, and her reading of his distributism The shared Chestertonian paradox in Undset's fiction: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange Resources Mentioned: The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton Gilbert Magazine Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson Chapters: 00:00: Welcome and the news of Sigrid Undset's cause 02:12: Who Sigrid Undset was 06:20: What publishers wanted versus what readers loved 09:58: The Willa Cather parallel 11:51: Belief, doubt, and the interior life of the novel 16:41: Undset's road to conversion and Robert Hugh Benson 23:20: The radical cost of her conversion 24:04: Dorothy Day and saints who don't fit the mold 27:09: Collecting and translating G.K. Chesterton 30:38: When Undset met G.K. Chesterton 33:19: Holiness for the laity 38:15: Why Undset and G.K. Chesterton speak to today FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    The Chestertonian Writer on the Road to Canonization

  3. Jul 14

    The Idea That Makes America More Like a Church Than a Nation

    This episode is a re-air. For Independence Day, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski set conversation aside and let G.K. Chesterton speak. This special gathers a curated series of Chesterton's reflections on America—the idea of the citizen, the creed at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, the nature of true patriotism, the true soldier, and the difference between the right sort of patriot and the wrong sort of politician—woven together with the strains of the nation's great patriotic songs. Drawn largely from What I Saw in America, they reveal a Chesterton who saw the American experiment more clearly than most Americans do. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton called America "the one great state in the world in which many types and races are united by one idea"—the idea of the citizen—and "almost more like a great church than merely a great nation" G.K. Chesterton's case that America is "the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed," one set forth in the Declaration of Independence with "dogmatic and even theological lucidity" What G.K. Chesterton meant by true patriotism, and why he held that "my country, right or wrong" is something "no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case" G.K. Chesterton on the true soldier, who "fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him" G.K. Chesterton's account of "Americanization"—the making of "a nation out of exiles"—and why he found the process unlike anything else in the world Resources Mentioned: What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton (Special Semiquincentennial Edition) The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:51: America United by the Idea of the Citizen 01:28: Tradition and the Presence of Penn and Franklin 02:13: Equality, Patriotism, and the Divine Basis of Democracy 03:54: Testing Patriotism Through the Old Songs 04:48: The Only Nation Founded on a Creed 06:24: The True Soldier and the War Ballads 07:35: Americanization—A Nation Made of Exiles 08:51: Fighting the Representatives We Choose 09:38: Liberty and Obedience FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

  4. Jul 7

    Five Myths You Probably Believe About G.K. Chesterton, Demolished

    Everyone thinks they know G.K. Chesterton: the beer-loving, pipe-smoking, gluttonous genius who tossed off masterpieces without breaking a sweat. Joe Grabowski and Grettelyn Darkey take those popular myths apart one by one, and the man who emerges from behind the legend is more remarkable than the caricature—a relentless working journalist, a trained artist, a temperate wine-and-water drinker, and a mind so restless it composed whole paragraphs before pen ever touched paper. In This Episode: Why Chesterton was first and foremost a journalist—not a "writer" in the grand literary sense—and why grasping that changes how you read everything else he wrote The truth about his writing process: not effortless genius, but a hard worker who composed and revised so thoroughly in his head that the finished prose only looked slapdash Journalism school or art school? His years at the Slade School of Art, the history courses alongside it, and how training as a sketch artist shaped the way he built an argument The drinking myth: a water-and-wine man at home, a generous buyer of rounds in company, and genuinely temperate—not the patron saint of ale The real story behind his size and his cigars: absent-minded grazing rather than gluttony, likely underlying health conditions, and why he smoked cigars and never a pipe Resources Mentioned: Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward I Also Had My Hour: An Alternative Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist What I Saw in America: Special Semiquincentennial Edition by G.K. Chesterton Chapters: 00:00: Sorting the man from the myths 01:40: Was Chesterton really a "writer"? 06:43: The truth about how he wrote 11:37: Journalism school or art school? 17:55: Chesterton the sketch artist 21:44: The patron saint of ale? 28:02: Did Chesterton overeat? 40:36: Pipe or cigar? 45:52: The man behind the myths FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    Five Myths You Probably Believe About G.K. Chesterton, Demolished

  5. Jun 30

    How Chesterton Saw Big Business and Big Government Becoming Allies Before Anyone Else Did

    div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> G.K. Chesterton published The Outline of Sanity in 1926—a blueprint for a third way between capitalism and socialism, grounded in widespread property ownership, local accountability, and the rejection of mass dependence. A century later, the argument reads less like a footnote and more like a forecast. In this episode, hosts Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski—who wrote the introduction to the new ACS Books centennial edition—walk through Chesterton's economic vision section by section and make the case that his outline is still waiting to be built. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton refused to let "capitalism" stand for what he meant and what the naming problem reveals about the false choice between two economic systems How G.K. Chesterton identified big business and big government as natural allies before anyone else did and why he saw their collusion coming as early as 1926 What G.K. Chesterton actually proposed: the section-by-section case for small ownership, fair regulation, and buying local over buying cheap Why G.K. Chesterton's warnings about advertising, standardization, and machinery anticipate the AI moment better than most things written in the last decade The tension G.K. Chesterton resolved that most economic thinkers never address: the difference between idealism, cynicism, and what he called sanity Chapters: 00:00: Introduction and Welcome 01:09: The ACS Centennial Edition and Why This Year 03:15: The Origins of Distributism and G.K.'s Weekly 08:58: What to Expect from The Outline of Sanity 11:08: Defining Capitalism—Why the Name Was Stolen 18:22: Big Business and Big Government in League 24:30: What Chesterton Actually Proposes: Regulation and Reform 28:40: Vote with Your Wallet: Boycotts, Advertising, and Snake Oil 39:58: The Land, the Machine, and Chesterton's Prophetic Vision 45:15: The Practicality of Idealism: Not Cynicism, Not Naïveté Resources Mentioned: The Outline of Sanity by G.K. Chesterton (ACS Books) FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    How Chesterton Saw Big Business and Big Government Becoming Allies Before Anyone Else Did

  6. Jun 23

    How One Line from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man Sent an Artist Around the World

    div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> G.K. Chesterton wrote that there are two ways of getting home—stay there, or walk around the entire world until you arrive from the other direction. For graphic novelist Ben Hatke, that line from The Everlasting Man wasn't simply a meditation on returning with fresh eyes: it became a commission. In this episode, Joe Grabowski sits down with Hatke—author of the forthcoming graphic memoir Home/World—to trace how one Chestertonian passage sent him east for 55 days across twelve countries, and how Chesterton's deepest convictions about man, story, and homecoming turned out to be more true the farther from home he traveled. In This Episode: How a single passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man—the two ways of getting home—became the animating vision behind a 55-day circumnavigation of the globe What Chesterton understood about encountering the world with fresh eyes: the generosity of strangers, the power of a story to cross any language barrier, and the world that waits beyond the screen How Ben Hatke wove historical figures—Ibn Battuta, Nellie Bly, Saint Francis—into the narrative as "ghosts," and why the Chestertonian idea of the communion of saints gives this technique its deepest meaning G.K. Chesterton's imagery of the circle and the line—from The Everlasting Man to Orthodoxy to The Man Who Was Thursday—and what it reveals about why a first encounter with any place is irrepeatable Why creating the book proved as life-changing as the journey itself and what Ben discovered about story, memory, and the difference between what is factual and what is true Chapters: 00:00: Welcome and Introduction 02:25: The Everlasting Man Quote Behind the Journey 06:01: Memory, Story, and How a Journey Becomes True 08:05: The Generosity of Strangers 13:37: Turkey and the Moment It Became an Adventure 22:33: Circumnavigating Post-COVID: The When and Why 31:02: "I Admire Your Life—It Looks Like Freedom" 35:03: Making the Book: Falling in Love with Storytelling Again 39:09: Historical Ghosts: Inviting the Past into the Journey 44:58: Circles and Lines: Chesterton's Vision of Coming Home Resources Mentioned: Home/World: A Circumnavigation of Our Shared Earth — Ben Hatke (forthcoming) Ben Hatke's website Ben Hatke on Patreon Ben Hatke on Instagram The Everlasting Man — G.K. Chesterton "Drawing Inspiration from Chesterton, with Ben Hatke" — previous Uncommon Sense appearance 2026 Chesterton Conference FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    How One Line from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man Sent an Artist Around the World

  7. Jun 16

    What G.K. Chesterton Might Have Said about America's Consecration to the Sacred Heart

    G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1926 that "the heart of Christendom is a heart" and in this episode, Joe and Grettelyn discover that this single line unlocks his entire approach to apologetics. Recording just before the U.S. bishops' historic consecration of America to the Sacred Heart on the nation's 250th anniversary, they trace the providential thread connecting two Pope Leos, a 1926 essay from GK's Weekly, and Chesterton's lifelong practice of winning opponents through friendship and wonder. In This Episode: How a 1926 essay in GK's Weekly reveals the theological principle behind G.K. Chesterton's entire method of winning hearts and minds What Chesterton's contrast of Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel teaches about "the softening of strength by chivalry and charity"—and what it means for how the Church evangelizes today Why G.K. Chesterton's observation that "madmen are logical" explains his insistence on appealing to beauty, wonder, and friendship rather than syllogisms How G.K. Chesterton's famous friendships with his opponents—and the characters of The Ball on the Cross—embody the theology of the Sacred Heart before he ever named it What Pope Leo XIII's 1899 encyclical Annum Sacrum reveals about the providential timing of the USCCB's consecration and the arrival of a new Pope Leo Chapters: 00:00: Introduction—The Sacred Heart and America at 250 02:29: The Providential Coincidence of Two Pope Leos 04:00: Background on the Sacred Heart Devotion 11:50: Why Consecrate a Nation? 13:57: Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical—What He Foretold About America 19:55: Reparations and the Burning Desire of Christ 23:22: What G.K. Chesterton Said About the Sacred Heart in 1926 26:43: Chesterton's Method—Apologetics of the Heart 33:31: Madmen, Small Circles, and Leading With Love 45:20: The Witness Consecration Calls Us To Resources Mentioned: What I Saw in America—Special Semiquincentennial Edition USCCB Consecration Resources Annum Sacrum—Pope Leo XIII, 1899 Dilexi te—Pope Leo XIV 2026 Chesterton Conference—Ave Maria FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    What G.K. Chesterton Might Have Said about America's Consecration to the Sacred Heart

  8. Jun 9

    How G.K. Chesterton Saw Through False Progress, Freud, and the Screen Age — and Why the World Is Still Catching Up

    Two of G.K. Chesterton's most unexpectedly prophetic essays take center stage in this issue of Gilbert Magazine: "An Architect's Nightmare," a 1928 piece that anticipates nearly everything being said today about AI, passive technology, and false progress, and "Freud on Slips of the Pen," a recently unearthed 1921 Daily Express article in which Chesterton dismantles psychoanalysis with surgical wit. Joe Grabowski and Grettelyn Darkey walk through the current issue of Gilbert—the official publication of the Society of G.K. Chesterton —drawing out what Chesterton saw about passive entertainment, the cyclical delusions of optimists and pessimists, and why art remains the irreducible signature of man. In This Episode: What G.K. Chesterton's 1928 essay "An Architect's Nightmare" reveals about spaces built for man vs. spaces man is expected to serve—and why his critique of industrial-age optimism and pessimism maps almost perfectly onto today's conversations about AI The pattern Chesterton exposed over a century ago: enthusiastic builders of terrible things who become pessimists insisting nothing can be done—and why Chesterton holds that human will, not historical inevitability, is what truly separates man from the octopus "Freud on Slips of the Pen": a newly unearthed 1921 essay in which G.K. Chesterton takes apart the Freudian slip using Hamlet, Punch and Judy, and the plain observation that a man who writes something down and doesn't cross it out intended to write it Chesterton on the standardizing effects of the cinema—how the same concerns raised about silent films in the 1920s echo in every conversation about video games, social media, and passive screen entertainment today A tour of the current Gilbert: the Chesterton Schools Network's capstone Rome pilgrimage, an 11th-grader's essay on Dante, a takedown of Paul Ehrlich's famously wrong prophecies, and G.K. Chesterton's poem "After Reading a Book of Modern Verse" Chapters: 00:00: Welcome and Introduction 02:24: Gilbert Magazine and the Legacy of G.K. Chesterton's GK's Weekly 05:30: The Current Issue: Cover Art and the Rome Pilgrimage Feature 11:29: "An Architect's Nightmare": G.K. Chesterton's 1928 Essay on Space, Man, and False Progress 19:05: The Optimist–Pessimist Cycle and What Chesterton Says About the AI Age 23:14: Virginia de la Lastra at the UN and Joe's Editorial on Passive Entertainment 29:10: Chesterton on Cinema, the Toy Theater, and the Imaginative Life 32:14: "Freud on Slips of the Pen": A Newly Unearthed 1921 Chesterton Essay 40:30: A Chesterton Poem, a Student's Essay on Dante, and Paul Ehrlich's Prophecies 44:24: Closing and How to Subscribe to Gilbert Resources Mentioned: Gilbert Magazine 2026 Chesterton Conference—"The Outline of Sanity" What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton Chesterton Schools Network Become a Member of the Society FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    How G.K. Chesterton Saw Through False Progress, Freud, and the Screen Age — and Why the World Is Still Catching Up
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The Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, where we talk about everything under the sun with a Chestertonian perspective, as well as the writings and legacy of G.K. Chesterton himself. The podcast is hosted by Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski. Want to give us feedback? Email podcast@chesterton.org.

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