Beyond the books
Listen, watch and history
Not everyone learns best from a page. Here are podcasts, lectures, audiobooks, videos and films worth your time, and the histories that explain how each question came to be asked. Each names the questions it helps with.
To listen to
Podcasts, recorded lectures and free audiobooks: for the commute, the walk, the dishes.
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Ancient Faith Ministries · many Orthodox podcasts · Orthodox Christian podcasts on prayer, the Fathers, icons and the spiritual life: the Eastern tradition from within.
Helps with: What is salvation for?; The way of prayer; How should we speak of God?; Icons and images; God's essence and His energies
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Peter Adamson, 2010 · hundreds of 20-minute episodes · The whole history of philosophy, a short episode at a time, including the late antique, Byzantine, Islamic and medieval thinkers other surveys skip.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; God's essence and His energies; Why is the good good?; Where does knowledge begin?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What makes you this one and no other?; Is there a spiritual soul?
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G. K. Chesterton · about 6 hours · Free volunteer recordings at LibriVox of Chesterton's account of how he came to the faith.
Helps with: Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Reform or tradition?; Is truth objective?
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Stephen West, 2013 · about 200 episodes · A clear, popular survey of philosophy, strongest on the moderns. Not Catholic: listen to understand the thinkers the Church is answering.
Helps with: Where does knowledge begin?; Is truth objective?; Are you free?; Person and community
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Matt Fradd, 2016 · weekly episodes and long interviews · Conversations and debates on God, morality and the Church, starting from St. Thomas. Also on video.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is happiness?; Marriage, sex and the body's meaning; Rules or character?
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Peter Kreeft · many talks, most under an hour · A Boston College philosopher on God, suffering, heaven and happiness: clear, funny, and easy to listen to on a walk.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is suffering for?; What is happiness?; Is truth objective?; What is heaven's happiness, at its heart?
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Podcast The Bible in a YearFr. Mike Schmitz, 2021 · 365 episodes, about 20 minutes each · The whole Bible read aloud over a year, in a reading plan that follows salvation history, with a short reflection each day.
Helps with: How should Scripture be read?
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Podcast The Catechism in a YearFr. Mike Schmitz, 2023 · 365 episodes, about 15 minutes each · The Catechism of the Catholic Church read aloud and explained, a few paragraphs a day.
Helps with: What do the sacraments do?; What is conscience?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Who can be saved?; Who interprets revelation?
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Podcast The History of ByzantiumRobin Pierson · hundreds of episodes · The Eastern Roman Empire from 476 to 1453, episode by episode: the councils, iconoclasm and the long road to the schism.
Helps with: Icons and images; The procession of the Holy Spirit; The office of Peter; What are the Eastern Catholic Churches?; Church and state
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Thomas à Kempis · about 7 hours · Free volunteer recordings at LibriVox of the most-read Christian book after the Bible.
Helps with: The way of prayer; Contemplation or action?
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Bishop Robert Barron · weekly episodes, about 30 to 45 minutes · Bishop Barron on faith and culture, answering listeners' questions on God, the Church and the arts.
Helps with: Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Can reason know that God exists?
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St. Augustine · about 13 hours · Free volunteer recordings of the public-domain translations at LibriVox.
Helps with: How does grace move the will?; How fallen is human nature?; What is happiness?
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Thomas V. Mirus · long-form interviews · Interviews on Catholic art, music, literature and liturgy: what a culture formed by the faith looks like.
Helps with: Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?; Should the faith take the forms of each culture it enters?; Liturgical development
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The Thomistic Institute · hundreds of recorded lectures, about an hour each · Lectures given by Dominicans and Catholic scholars on university campuses, on God, the soul, ethics and grace in the tradition of St. Thomas.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Are you free?; How does grace move the will?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What is happiness?