The development and use of AI chatbots has grown massively. With hundreds of millions of users, OpenAI, XAI, Claude AI, and others have become a normal part of many people's day. Some Christians have an uneasy attitude toward the use of AI Chatbots, while others are supportive and have developed their own. In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss the moral question: whether Christians should use AI chatbots, and the ramifications that it has on human nature.

Professor Rocco Buttiglione and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss the rise of nationalism and populism both in Europe and America. What is the proper Catholic understanding of the peoples and nations? How should we navigate a global economic order within modern nation-states? They discuss how the Church has responded to this situation, and how the theology of the peoples can provide an answer.

D. C. Schindler argues that the loss of authority is the greatest of all human crises. When Nietzsche speaks of the death of God, which will lead to calamities, Schindler sees the great loss of authority. Liberalism's dismantling of any authority in favor of the sovereign individual has lead to the collapse of social order and the pursuit of a genuinely common good. In this podcast with Andrew Willard Jones, D. C. Schindler discusses authority and how it can be recovered.

We live in a disillusioned political age, one where old liberal arguments no longer have hold. Conservatism has moved into a right-wing politics which no longer sees the value of Christianity. Lost in an ostensibly equal mass, individuals have experienced a loss of identity. New developments in technology, and especially AI, present an existential threat to human agency. In our time (2025) and place (America), we need the social doctrine of the Church.

In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Reuben Slife discuss the latest New Polity magazine, Issue 6.1, and specifically the translation of Alberto Methol Ferré's striking essay "The Church, People Among the Peoples." Is the Church a visible people, or a people among the peoples? How does the Church overcome oppositions, universal-particular?

In this podcast, Reuben Slife interviews Rocco Buttiglione about his life and work. Buttiglione was promised by Luigi Guissani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, that a Christian life will never be boring; taking this wager, he discusses his studies with Augusto Del Noce, his early encounters in Poland with Karol Wojtyła, his appointment to the European Union and time as Italian Minister of European Affairs, and the beginning of his friendship with Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina.

In honor of the new Pope Leo XIV, and in celebration of the 134th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Alex Denley and Andrew Willard Jones discuss the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII and the birth of modern Catholic Social Teaching.

In honor of the passing of the Pope, Marc Barnes and Reuben Slife discuss the life of Francis and the theology which he embodied: the theology of peoples. They also discuss Rocco Buttiglione's new book Modernity's Alternative and how Latin America formed the Pope's pastoral life and mission.

At the 2024 New Polity conference, Matthew B. Crawford gave the keynote address in which he contrasted the view of man inherent in technocratic rationalism with that of a Christian view. Drawing from the work of Joseph Ratzinger and Michael Oakeshott, Crawford draws a distinction between an orientation toward receiving life as gift and cramped rationalism that views man as an object to be synthetically remade. The current push for technocratic control over every sphere of life collapses the vertical order of reality and aims to eliminate contingency, risk, and play. In contrast, one who affirms the inherent goodness of being is able to experience a real vitality of life in a meaningful world.

In the 20th century, a movement of priests and laypeople sought to find a way past the clash of ideologies that wracked Latin America. They found a solution in Latin America itself, which was born out of the conflict between Europeans and natives when, with the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Guadalupe, the grace of God forged one, new people out of strangers and enemies. This movement—called “theology of peoples”—focuses on the reality known as “a people.” Every human person belongs to a people. And every people has a “world”: the way it makes sense out of life, work, love, and the uncertain future. In this podcast, Reuben Slife and Marc Barnes discuss Modernity's Alternative by Rocco Buttiglione.

What is the difference between a people and a nation? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Ernest Renan's influential lecture "What is a nation?". Renan argues that a nation is not formed by common descent, language, religion, or geography. Rather, a nation is a spiritual principle that requires sacrifice, and a forgetting of the past. Marc and Alex discuss Renan's definition of a nation and how it formed the development of nation states in the modern period.

In this special episode of Political Saints, Marc Barnes and Nicolas McAfee discuss the heroic political life of St. Thomas More. Thomas More was the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 until 1531. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and was executed. Pope Pius XI canonized Thomas More as a martyr in 1935.

For the last five years, the Political Right has been debating over a program for regime change in America: should populism be used to construct a new elite class? Should a new administration retire all government employees? Can the bureaucratic state be maintained but filled with new conservative staff? In this podcast, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss subsidiarity as the solution to this debate, and how it provides a program for genuine regime change.

What is the meaning of national identity? Does strong national identity necessarily create a hostile relation with other nations? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Joseph Ratzinger's short book "The Unity of Nations." Through a discussion of the political theology of Origen and St. Augustine, Ratzinger shows how the early Christians viewed their relation to the nations, and Christianity's nation-unifying gospel.