The PloughCast
Plough
How can we live well together? What gives life purpose? What about technology, education, faith, capitalism, work, family? Is another life possible? Plough editor Peter Mommsen and senior editor Susannah Black Roberts dig deeper into perspectives from a wide variety of writers and thinkers appearing in the pages of Plough.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 3, 2024 • 29min
The PloughRead: The Sadness of the Creatures by Peter Mommsen
Peter Mommsen asks if humans should live by the laws of nature.
Apr 26, 2024 • 16min
The PloughRead: Are You a Tree? by Joy Clarkson
In an excerpt from her book, Joy Marie Clarkson explores the natural metaphors that we use. Are you a tree, she asks, or are you a potted plant?
Apr 24, 2024 • 20min
The PloughRead: Meeting the Wolf by Greta Gaffin
Greta Gaffin asks if humans should return to nature, and looks to the lives of two saints who taught us to make peace with it instead.
Apr 19, 2024 • 26min
The PloughRead: The Leper of Abercuawg by David McBride
David McBride introduces his new translation of The Leper of Abercuawg, a thousand-year-old Welsh poem in which an outcast seeks comfort in the wild.
Apr 17, 2024 • 36min
81: Can Metaphors Help Us Live Well?
Joy Clarkson discusses her new book, and the importance of metaphor.Why are metaphors important? How can they help us live well – and how can they go wrong? Why should we not think of ourselves as computers? And what does all this mean for our language about God?In the discussion, Joy and Susannah range widely through topics including apophatic theology, the inevitability of metaphorical language, Owen Barfield, Anthroposophy, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Suzanne Simard’s research on how trees communicate via fungal networks, and much more.
Apr 12, 2024 • 24min
The PloughRead: The Plants Can Talk by William Thomas Okie
William Thomas Okie says plants can talk; but is anyone listening?
Apr 10, 2024 • 20min
The PloughRead: Saving the Soil, Saving the Farm by Colin Boller
Colin Boller explains how regenerative agriculture helps farmers care for the land and pay the bills.
Apr 5, 2024 • 17min
The PloughRead: Dandelions: An Apology by Clare Coffey
Clare Coffey gives a defense of the dandelion, the plant that always comes back.
Apr 3, 2024 • 1h
80: The Technology of Middle-Earth
Matthew Scarince and Sebastian Milbank discuss Tolkien and technology. Susannah chimes in.Is J. R. R. Tolkien anti-technology? What is the relationship between magic and technology in the world of the Lord of the Rings, and in ours? What do the elves have to do with that? What can we tell by looking at the rings, the palantíri, the silmarils?Should the Lord of the Rings be read as a straightforward critique of industrial society? How can the categories of mending and preservation be used to understand how the various heroes and heroines of Middle-earth go about shepherding this world into its next age, and how can those categories help us to do the same in our age?
Mar 27, 2024 • 24min
The PloughRead: Saskatchewan, Promised Land by Daniel J. D. Stulac
Daniel J. D. Stulac, a newcomer to Saskatchewan, searches for the Old Testament promise.
