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. 4d ago

    G.K. Chesterton on Mariolatry: Chronic and Quite Incurable

    In 1926, the year his wife Frances entered the Church, G.K. Chesterton published The Queen of Seven Swords, a small book of poems about Our Lady. Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski skip the expected devotional pieces for the surprising ones, where Chesterton turns his love for Mary into an answer to his critics.  In This Episode: Why 1926 may have turned G.K. Chesterton's mind toward Our Lady: his wife Frances entered the Church that year, and his biographer Maisie Ward calls it a lonely time of lost friends Who J.S. Phillimore was, and why Chesterton dedicated a book of poems to this fellow convert and champion of the ballad "A Party Question," Chesterton's reply to Arnold Lunn, an agnostic who attacked his conversion and later became a Catholic himself How "The White Witch" moves the moon from a pagan goddess's brow to beneath Mary's feet Chesterton's short poem against treating birth control as the test of liberality Resources Mentioned: The Queen of Seven Swords by G.K. Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. XVIII (includes Chaucer) FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: G.K. Chesterton's book of poems to Our Lady 02:45: Frances Chesterton enters the Church 06:30: A lonely year for Chesterton 08:02: The dedication to J.S. Phillimore 15:00: "A Party Question" 21:22: Arnold Lunn and Roman Converts 25:43: Our Lady's share in Chesterton's conversion 28:25: Our Lady's champion 29:59: Losing sight of Mary, losing sight of Christ 33:06: "The White Witch" 40:58: "An Agreement" 46:35: Bringing the book back into print Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    G.K. Chesterton on Mariolatry: Chronic and Quite Incurable

  2. Oct 6

    "Millions Now Alive Will Never Live": G.K. Chesterton's Warning

    Some of the G.K. Chesterton in the new issue of Gilbert isn't collected anywhere else. Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski open with a 1933 essay on why the two usual arguments against communism fail, and why those arguments push the young toward communism rather than away from it. Then comes Chesterton on shapeless art, and a leisure state run by robots that he could only call all wrong. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton thought both common ways of arguing with communists were wrong: insults win no one over, and sneering at a young person's ideals only sounds like a greedy old man forbidding them to be anything else Chesterton's alternative: appeal to the natural desire for a home and a plot of land, and show that real private property protects everyone's fair share Why, for Chesterton, the opposite of art is shapelessness rather than ugliness Chesterton's 1927 claim that films are more unreal than portraits because they are more like life, read against today's AI-generated actors A blended Chesterton essay on a leisure state where robots do all the work, and his warning that "Millions now alive will never live" Resources Mentioned: Gilbert Magazine Become a member of the Chesterton Society and get Gilbert Magazine! Justice & Charity by Fulton J. Sheen "Awakening the Sense of Wonder" by G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, March 19, 1927 Uncommon Sense: G.K. Chesterton vs. Communism and Socialism FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: A new issue of Gilbert 01:15: Dale Ahlquist's finds from the archives 04:11: "How Not to Do It" (1933) 08:32: The argument from liberty and private property 10:33: Fulton Sheen and the third way 15:08: More from this issue of Gilbert 17:52: The Venus de Milo on the trombone 19:50: Shapelessness, the antithesis of art 26:35: Waxworks, films, and Felix the Cat 28:53: Robots and the leisure state 32:19: "Can't you see? It's all wrong" 37:39: "Millions now alive will never live" Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    "Millions Now Alive Will Never Live": G.K. Chesterton's Warning

  3. Sep 29

    Why G.K. Chesterton Thought St. Gabriel More Glorious Than St. Michael

    In 1929, with the world at peace, G.K. Chesterton wrote a prayer to St. Michael, the warrior archangel. For Michaelmas, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski read "To St. Michael in Time of Peace" and ask what Chesterton saw coming that made him call on Michael then—and why he still counted Gabriel, stooping to greet a peasant girl, the more glorious angel. In This Episode: The Pope Leo XIII backstory behind the poem: his Prayer to St. Michael, and a famous 1884 vision no one has traced to a source Why G.K. Chesterton prayed to the warrior archangel in a year of peace: he sensed what he called Prussianism returning The poem's image of St. Michael at the Crucifixion, hand on the hilt, holding back his legions until Christ said "It is finished" Chesterton's warning against a peace kept by money A 1926 G.K.'s Weekly passage where Chesterton, arguing against Nietzsche, calls St. Gabriel stooping to greet the peasant girl more glorious than St. Michael striking down the traitor, and how Joe connects it to the single feast the three archangels now share Resources Mentioned: To St. Michael in Time of Peace by G.K. Chesterton Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton "A Word with Dr. Oscar Levy" by G.K. Chesterton, G.K.'s Weekly, October 16, 1926 FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: Michaelmas and the Feast of the Archangels 01:43: Oxford's Michaelmas term and the darkening of the year 05:17: St. Michael through the centuries 08:19: Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael 13:38: The 1884 vision: a legend without a source 16:42: "To St. Michael in Time of Peace" (1929) 21:23: St. Michael at the foot of the Cross 25:56: Why invoke St. Michael in time of peace 31:30: Why the archangels belong together 34:14: Michael, Gabriel, and the Sacred Heart 37:09: Humility, Tobit, and the Annunciation 40:18: Michaelmas in Tolkien Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios Episode art image credit: "St-Michel-Mont-Mercure, Vendée", original photo by Pom', 26 July 2023; on Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0

    Why G.K. Chesterton Thought St. Gabriel More Glorious Than St. Michael

  4. Sep 22

    Why Fulton Sheen Called G.K. Chesterton His Greatest Influence

    A seminarian once wrote Fulton Sheen asking to write a master's thesis on his work, and Sheen wrote back telling him to write on G.K. Chesterton instead. Ahead of Sheen's beatification, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski trace what the American broadcaster took from the English journalist—down to two passages read aloud here that turn out to be Chesterton with an American accent. In This Episode: The 1925 request that started it: Sheen asked G.K. Chesterton to write the introduction to his first book, received "I know nothing about philosophy" in reply, and got the introduction anyway What Sheen wrote in his autobiography about where his style came from: Chesterton above all, with C.S. Lewis arriving later A priest's letter, published years afterward, recalling that Sheen told him to drop the thesis on Sheen and write on Chesterton Two passages read in full—one on why a child says "do it again," one on a drop of gutter water lifted into snow—and what in them comes straight out of the ethics of Elfland Sheen's distributism: the American extension of a critique he took from Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, collected in a volume of his 1930s writing on communism Resources Mentioned: God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy by Fulton J. Sheen, with an introduction by G.K. Chesterton Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen Chesterton's Marriage Proposal Justice & Charity by Fulton J. Sheen St. Austin Review FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Chapters: 00:00: A Chesterton podcast for the week of Fulton Sheen's beatification 01:09: How each host came to Sheen 04:14: Illinois, 1895: a quick bio of Fulton Sheen 09:20: An hour of preparation for every ten minutes of speaking 12:30: "I know nothing about philosophy": the 1925 meeting in London 15:25: What is actually known about Sheen at Chesterton's funeral 17:01: Treasure in Clay names Chesterton the greatest influence 21:37: Justice & Charity and Sheen's American distributism 24:40: A priest's letter: "Chesterton's the man" 28:39: "Do it again": Sheen on the eternal appetite of infancy 33:07: A drop of gutter water and the one thing saved for heaven 36:28: Musical lineage and the communion of saints Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    Why Fulton Sheen Called G.K. Chesterton His Greatest Influence

  5. Sep 15

    Chesterton is the Antidote to the Illness of our Age

    Somebody once wrote a fairy tale where the quest that wins the princess was to find a single newspaper that didn't contain an article by G.K. Chesterton. Dr. Susan Hanssen wrote her doctoral dissertation on him and now teaches history at the University of Dallas, and she argues he's the hinge of what Adam Schwartz called the third spring of English Catholicism. She ends the episode reading Lepanto aloud. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton reached readers the Catholic converts before him never could. John Henry Newman was an Oxford man writing for an educated elite, and Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poetry too esoteric for the common reader. Chesterton never went to university at all. The claim behind G.K. Chesterton's range: that he could start from any subject whatsoever, Victorian china shepherdesses included, and bring you back to a Christian understanding of the human person. Why nearly every movie preview is about the end of the world now, and how G.K. Chesterton was already correcting both Hegel's coming utopia and Oswald Spengler's inevitable decline. The essay in Heretics with the dull title that Dr. Hanssen calls the absolute cure for family troubles.  What "the English-speaking world" actually meant in 1910, and why an illustrated London paper could put G.K. Chesterton in front of Gandhi in Calcutta and an oil widow in Texas. Resources Mentioned: Dr. Hanssen's talk at this summer's Chesterton conference What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Heretics by G.K. Chesterton Literary Converts by Joseph Pearce Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:30: Meeting Susan Hanssen, and a dissertation on Chesterton 02:53: The English-speaking world goes silent after the Reformation 07:35: Newman's second spring, and the third spring that followed 11:09: Belloc, the Latin south, and Chesterton as the Dickens of his age 14:30: High characters, middle characters, and the low characters Dickens let in 15:41: When the Mediterranean was the whole world, and then it wasn't 21:02: The illustrated papers, and writing for absolutely everyone 23:02: Three volumes that only list what he published 24:38: The fairy tale quest to find a paper without Chesterton in it 33:39: Chesterton the painter, and why his essays read like wet canvas 46:01: Lepanto, read aloud FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    Chesterton is the Antidote to the Illness of our Age

  6. Sep 8

    G.K. Chesterton's Devotion to the Mother of God

    G.K. Chesterton spent his life writing about Our Lady, and the poems are still doing their work. Maria Romine, drama teacher at Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, traces her entry into the Catholic Church to a rosary handed to her in a gift shop, and her love of Chesterton to a poem about the Mother of God. On Our Lady's birthday, the conversation covers the Frances Chesterton Rosary League, saints on the high school stage, and Gilbert and Frances Chesterton as a model for married life. In this Episode: Chesterton's Marian poems, "A Little Litany" above all, did what no argument had: they sent one Presbyterian convert on a years-long search to understand how a man comes to write that way about the Mother of God. A Chesterton reading group in St. Louis began praying the rosary together, and within a few years an eager parent group had opened a Chesterton Academy there—a sequence the guest describes as the Holy Family finally getting its mother. Chesterton built a theater inside his own house and wrote plays for the neighborhood children; his play The Surprise dramatizes the idea that human makers work under God as subcreators. Memorizing a saint's words changes the actor who speaks them—the argument behind a Catholic high school's practice of building each year's production around a single saint. Freshmen learn two lines before they learn any steps: "May I have this dance" and "I would be delighted." Nobody can be rejected, so nobody has to be nervous. Resources: G.K. Chesterton and Our Lady, edited by Nancy Carpentier Brown, with an essay by Maria Romine The Surprise, G.K. Chesterton's play adapted for television by Dale Ahlquist The Frances Chesterton Rosary League Chesterton Academy of St. Louis on Instagram Chesterton Academy of St. Louis on Facebook FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Chapters: 00:00: Welcome, and a guest on Our Lady's birthday 01:25: A convert, a gift-shop rosary, and Our Lady's last nudge 03:47: Three strangers, one question: are you consecrated? 05:33: Chesterton's Marian poems, and the quest they started 09:20: A rosary league first, then a Chesterton school in St. Louis 12:40: The stage as an incarnational art, and Chesterton's play The Surprise 14:28: Playing saints, and what memorized words do to a student 19:07: Teaching English country dance to freshmen 21:19: "May I have this dance": two lines that end the awkwardness 23:57: Daily Mass, and becoming small versions of Gilbert and Frances 27:32: The Society as the Chestertons' extended godchildren 31:41: The Legion of Mary, and a Marian plan for October Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    G.K. Chesterton's Devotion to the Mother of God

  7. Sep 1

    Chesterton's Thoughts on Mistakes in Modern Education

    G.K. Chesterton gave an entire quarter of What's Wrong with the World to what he called the mistake about the child, and his verdict was blunt: the schoolmaster works not for the parent but against him. In this solo back-to-school episode, Joe Grabowski follows that argument through to the line Chesterton offers as the whole purpose of teaching—to pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life—and asks what it would take to recover the childlike wonder Chesterton insisted was education's only real aim. What's in This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton opened What's Wrong with the World with a chapter about medicine, and what a doctor's knowledge of a healthy body has to do with schools The chapter Chesterton titled The Outlawed Parent, where he charges that the schoolmaster works against the parent rather than for him The single sentence Chesterton offers as the only real aim of education, and why it is easy to miss in a book this quotable What Chesterton meant in In Defence of Baby Worship by a new universe inside every child's head, and why it does not make him an idealist The passage in Orthodoxy where Chesterton imagines God saying "do it again" to the sun every morning Resources Mentioned: What's Wrong with the World Orthodoxy The Everlasting Man The Defendant Chesterton Schools Network Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:30: Back to school, and what education is actually for 02:29: The medical mistake, and why we stopped asking what is right 04:47: Education, or the mistake about the child 07:42: Parents standing up at school board meetings 09:33: The Chesterton Schools Network 11:59: The only real aim of education 14:18: Keeping familiarity from breeding contempt 19:08: In Defence of Baby Worship, and a new universe in every head 21:31: The delight children take in inventing words 23:48: Man the sign maker, and Walker Percy on language 26:11: The eternal appetite of infancy FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    Chesterton's Thoughts on Mistakes in Modern Education

  8. Aug 25

    G.K. Chesterton's Conversion and its Augustinian Parallels

    On the feasts of Saints Monica and Augustine, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski trace G.K. Chesterton's long road into the Catholic Church, beginning with his 1903 newspaper battle with Blatchford and McCabe and ending at the sacramental hesitation that held him back until 1922. They show why Chesterton refused to hang his belief on one or two arguments, and why a man for whom every daisy was already a miracle found it hardest to meet God in one particular priest. The takeaway is a habit any reader can practice: reading the world for connections, on the saints' feasts and on every other day of the year. In This Episode: Why Chesterton fits no single school. He is Augustinian, Thomistic, Franciscan, and Scotistic at once What Chesterton actually told McCabe about the "two great pegs" his conversion supposedly hung on Why fear, not doubt, marked Chesterton's final approach—and how it echoes Augustine's "not yet" The sacramental hurdle for a man who already found God in sunshine and daisies A Chestertonian habit to practice: connecting the unlikely and reading everything for truth Resources Mentioned: The Catholic Church and Conversion Orthodoxy The Man Who Was Thursday The City of God (St. Augustine) Episode art image credit: Nheyob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:33: Welcome and Today's Topic 01:48: Why Chesterton Resists Every Label 05:30: The First Conversion and the Blatchford Controversy 10:38: Reading from The Catholic Church and Conversion 12:29: Fear, Not Doubt 14:52: The Sacraments as the Last Step 17:34: Free Will and the Marriage Metaphor 19:39: Augustine's Search and the Grace Behind It 23:09: Restlessness and the Search for Peace 27:07: The Policeman, the Anarchist, and the Fence 33:35: How to Become Chestertonian FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

    G.K. Chesterton's Conversion and its Augustinian Parallels
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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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