I changed my mind about euthanasia in June 2015. The world has been rushing in the other direction. For The Dispatch I explain why MAiD makes an idol of autonomy …
Books I Hope to Read in 2026
We're so back, baby. Three kids plus touring but not writing a book meant (comparatively) more time for reading. My book launch and my littlest baby being big enough to not travel with me synced up well, and meant I had plenty of flights with no one on my lap and quiet time with paper… Read More
Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson's newest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, cast two priests as murder victim and murder suspect. I loved it. My review for Word on Fire. In Wake Up Dead Man, as in his television show Poker Face, Johnson turns out to be interested in a deeper mystery than “whodunnit” or “howdunnit.” Even if a murderer… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2025
From mid-August on, all of my book tour trips were done solo. So I got a lot more reading done in the back half of the year, with almost twenty plane or train legs without a very grabby baby on my lap. These are my favorite books I read in 2025 (regardless of when they… Read More
Evangelization, Rich and Strange
At Word on Fire, I have an essay on unlocking better disagreement by being frank about the strangeness of your position from your interlocutor's point of view: As a Catholic, I told him I was more sympathetic than he might expect. If my own Church saw priesthood primarily as a matter of evocative preaching or… Read More
Engineering and Efficiency
It was my pleasure to review Brian Potter's The Origins of Efficiency for American Compass's Commonplace. One of the most moving victories of re-engineering that Potter describes is the production of penicillin on an industrial scale. The mold first discovered by Alexander Fleming was finicky, and the lifesaving antibiotic it produced was hard to isolate.… Read More
Why AI Can’t Be Your Friend
For The Dispatch, I was happy to take a careful look at when an AI tool can and cannot be a helpful thinking partner. Programmers have their own way to get their thoughts outside their heads. Coders noticed that when they pulled aside a colleague to explain where they were stuck, they often spotted why they were… Read More
A Pastoral Ideological Turing Test
Charlotte's Bishop is shunting all the Traditional Latin Mass communities to a single site, specifically chosen because it can only hold about a quarter of those who currently seek out the Extraordinary Form. I have a paywalled op-ed for The Pillar (they're worth it!) with a prayer for what could happen next. If he wants… Read More
Who Loves You, Baby?
Daniel K. Williams is a can't miss historian for me. I was delighted to get an early copy of his Abortion and America's Churches, a history of how denominations chose sides around Roe v. Wade. I drew on one thread of his history for an essay for Word on Fire. In Williams’s telling, in the… Read More
Diagnosis and Disease
I was pleased to get to respond to Suzanne O'Sullivan's The Age of Diagnosis for Fairer Disputations. She wrote a compassionate, curious book on a highly charged issue: O’Sullivan isn’t against inclusion tout court, but she’s very attentive to who gains and who loses. When a diagnosis expands, people with milder versions of the disorder can… Read More
Bad News in Divorce Data
The divorce rate is declining, but for the worst reasons. Fewer and fewer people are getting married. I explain the problem for the Institute for Family Studies. The decline in marriage has also not been uniform. Wealthier and better-educated singles are more likely to get married than those who are poorer and less educated. Marriage… Read More
A Breast Pump Designed for Your Boss
In "Designing Women," I'm writing at Comment on how the tools intended for women often serve the interests of someone else. I'm very much indebted to Designing Motherhood, which I …
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