The Understory
The Understory is a limited podcast series that brings together talks from the first Understory Festival, held at Washington National Cathedral in late May 2026. The festival was a three-day experiment in Christian humanism, blending argument, silence, music, lament, poetry, and debate as ways of attending to reality. Listeners hear from thinkers, artists, pastors, and institution-builders exploring questions like what is struggling to be born, what it means to be human, and who Christ is for us today. Presented by Comment, the series extends the festival's conversations to a wider audience.
Episodes
Deep Roots or Open Arms? — Bishop Claude Alexander, Tim Dixon, Maria Liu Wong, Bishop Vivian Grubb, Brian Dijkema, Chris Oldfield, and Shirley Mullen
The deepest resources of the Christian tradition refuse the false binary of rootedness and openness. On the festival's second afternoon, six practitioners gathered around expansive questions: Must deep roots and open arms compete? What traditions are worth nurturing and passing on to the next generation? Can the open-armed avoid thinning into nothing in particular, or the followers of a way avoid
Getting Unstuck on Immigration — Diego Sánchez, Jennie Murray, Jim Robb, Peter Skerry, and David Lapp
Immigration debates tend to oscillate between abstract policy positions and individual stories conscripted by either side. This panel, inspired and moderated by Braver Angels' principles of structured civil dialogue, charts a new path toward finding common ground. Braver Angels cofounder David Lapp moderates four panelists: Diego Sánchez, an immigration lawyer, formerly undocumented for fourteen y
Critical Yeast vs. Critical Mass — Cherie Harder, Lisa Slayton, Louis Kim, Ian DeWaard, and David Bailey
How does cultural and moral renewal actually happen? Two schools of thought emerge to answer this recurring question from the 2026 Understory festival. The first argues that critical mass is the key to social change, requiring enough people mobilized to tip institutions, policies, and norms. The second, based on John Paul Lederach's theory of critical yeast, posits that culture change is rarely th
In the Time of Fire — Christian Wiman
With a jolt through his spine, Christian Wiman's poem "In the Time of Fire" came to him. Included in his latest collection of poetry, The Dance, the poem's speaker shifts from a man to a woman, addressing the world as a prophetic voice of wisdom. Recorded live on May 29, 2026, Wiman recited his poem in the great nave of the Washington National Cathedral, to the crowd at the Understory Uprising, th
Investing in Beauty — Roberta Ahmanson, Makoto Fujimura, Haejin Fujimura, and David Bailey
Friendship was a central theory of change at the Understory, revealing itself in main-stage debates and quiet corridor chats. Few panels demonstrated its power more potently than David Bailey's conversation on arts and patronage. David—a musician, author, producer, and founder of Arrabon—brought together his longtime friend, renowned artist and author Makoto Fujimura, with their mutual friend, wri
Acceleration, Resonance, and a Rule of Life — Steven Lawson and Manuel Andreas Dürr
We live in a culture obsessed with productivity, efficiency, speed, and success. But after all the triumph of technological advance, it may still be that the defining condition of our time is not merely acceleration but alienation, marked particularly by the absence of what acceleration destroys: resonance. Coined by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, "resonance" is the experience of addressing and
Screw-Ups — Amber Lapp
Amber Lapp has spent years living among the people and places she writes about. Not merely taking on economically struggling communities as a neutral observer, but becoming a neighbor. A research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and co-investigator of the Love and Marriage in Middle America Project, she reads questions of civic renewal through the moral vocabulary of dignity, solidarity,
It Is Now, It Is Not — Christian Wiman
Is reality itself a settled fact or an ongoing act of creation? Is some new chapter in history struggling to be born? Or, more demandingly, are we facing our own awakening within it? Poet Christian Wiman weaves together his own thoughts with the words of exiled Russian poet Osip Mandelstam in an effort to notice the entanglement of external reality with our perceiving it—"It is now. / It is not."
Can You Build AI That Serves Human Flourishing? — Adam Kronk, Meghan Sullivan, L.M. Sacasas, and Jeremy Cowart
What is a human being? One of the convictions in the seedbed of the Understory is that every age eventually reveals an answer to this question either explicitly or implicitly. This sometimes surfaces in philosophical debate. Other times, it is embedded in education. Or in politics or public policy. Or in marketing and economics. And sometimes it appears in the technologies we build. Artificial int
Broken Beauty — Makoto Fujimura
The artist Makoto Fujimura has spent decades exploring what he calls "broken beauty"—the observation that beauty is often born not despite the fractures each one of us experiences in this life but through them. On the opening night of the 2026 Understory festival, Fujimura reflected on what this vision of broken beauty might mean for the world at this particular moment. Rather than asking how quic
Politics in the Pulpit — Mariann Budde, Walter Kim, Charlie Dates and John Carr (moderated by David Bailey)
There's a needle many pastors have spent the last decade trying to thread. Speak to the moment and you're called partisan. Stay above it and you're called silent. Speak prophetically and you're accused of politics; refuse politics and you're accused of abandoning the prophetic. On the second day of the Understory festival, four leaders from four distinct Christian traditions sat down to consider t
Twins — Romanita Hairston
Philanthropic leader Romanita Hairston suggests that what is struggling to be born in our time is not one thing but two … and that neither can survive without the other. Beginning with artificial intelligence and ending with one of the most personal stories of the evening, she invites us to imagine a humanity no longer defined by usefulness alone. This reflection originally appeared in our episode
How Does a Person Become Real? — Angela Duckworth and Luke Burgis
Luke Burgis and Angela Duckworth are watching the same traffic move in opposite directions, and this hour is the first time they've worked it out in the same room. Burgis, founder of the Cluny Institute, author of Wanting, and a teacher at Catholic University's Ciocca Center, has spent years tracing how mimetic desire pulls us into borrowed identities. How much of what we take to be our own wanti
Rehumanizing Our Common Life — Shadi Hamid, Elizabeth Oldfield, Ray Pennings, Anne Snyder, and Mark Labberton
What does it take to rehumanize our common life in a moment of cultural fragility, institutional collapse, and crisis of trust? Recorded at the Washington National Cathedral for Comment magazine's inaugural Understory Festival, this roundtable asks how culture, beauty, and faith might rehumanize a fractured public life. Mark Labberton is joined by Comment editor-in-chief Anne Snyder, The Sacred ho
Is There a Word from the Lord? — Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates
Is there a word from the Lord for us today? Pastor Charlie Dates closes the Understory festival with a sermon that speaks to a weary age hungry for both truth and hope. Introduced by Anne Snyder and preceded by a live musical offering from Grammy-winning gospel musician Kevin Bond, this final session asks the question beneath the entire gathering: Who is Christ for us today? Mentioned: Breaking Gr
Is This a Time to Build, or a Time to Re-found? — David Brooks and Ross Douthat
Do our institutions need repair—or replacement? In one of the festival's most anticipated conversations, longtime friends and conservative public intellectuals David Brooks and Ross Douthat debate whether our moment calls for rebuilding existing institutions or re-founding them altogether. Introduced by Christine Emba and reflected upon by Mark Labberton. Mentioned: Albert O. Hirschman Frederick B
The Christian Humanist Lens on Our Moment — Luke Bretherton
What happens when people no longer feel capable of shaping the world around them? Oxford theologian Luke Bretherton argues that beneath our political and cultural turmoil lie twin crises of agency and institutional trust. Drawing on the Christian humanist tradition, he proposes a recovery of the human person rooted not in autonomy or power but in participation, responsibility, and the image of Chr
Unfinished Business: Picking Up the Mantle — Anika Prather
What work has been left unfinished—and who will carry it forward? Scholar, educator, and founder Anika Prather traces a mantle passed from Elijah to Elisha, from Abraham Lincoln to later generations, and ultimately to us. Drawing on Scripture, history, song, and the Black Church tradition, she argues that the work of reconciliation, education, repair, and beloved community remains unfinished. Reco
Welcome to the Understory, Where the Future Quietly Takes Root — Anne Snyder
In this opening episode, Comment editor-in-chief Anne Snyder delivers the remarks she offered on the first night of the Understory festival—a three-day gathering hosted by Comment at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Drawing on history's overlooked seedbeds of moral imagination, Anne reflects on what stirs beneath the surface of our exhausted public life: a scattered, largely invisible c
What Is Struggling to Be Born? — Fr. Tomáš Halík
When old certainties crumble, what is God bringing forth? Opening the Understory festival from Prague, Czech Republic, priest and theologian Tomáš Halík reflects on faith after Christendom, the wounds that become sites of encounter with God, and why Christianity's future may depend less on restoration than on spiritual maturity. His remarks are followed by responses from Makoto Fujimura, Romanita
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