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
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
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
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
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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