Theory Underground serves workers with earbuds getting into big ideas. Ordo Amoris is its theology arm, its own channel, built on a single exchange. David McKerracher came up through continental philosophy and phenomenology and is learning theology in public. Mark Griswold comes from theology and is learning philosophy in return.
Each host stays a beginner on one side of the table and a teacher on the other, so the show never runs out of road. Augustine's phrase for rightly ordered love gives it its name and its question: what do we love, and in what order. The line running under every episode is theology's grip on philosophy, Marshall McLuhan included.
- The thinkers. Episodes on the Catholic minds that shaped how David thinks, read through their actual work rather than summarized about it: G.K. Chesterton first of all, then Marshall McLuhan, Ivan Illich, Paul Virilio, Edith Stein, and Max Scheler. These are brought into productive dialogue with the masters of suspicion, from Descartes to Žižek, including thinkers such as Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, Lacan, Sartre, Bourdieu, Badiou, and Baudrillard.
- The scene. Reading and adjudicating the live arguments in Catholic and postliberal publishing, from First Things to New Polity to The Postliberal Order and the wider orbit. Articles, chapters, books, used as opportunities to explore and share.
- The guests. We aim to have some special guests doing work in the world of theology and philosophy today.
- In Defense of the Mass: Keeping It Strange
- In Defense of Performativity
- Why Isn't the Music Beautiful? Whatever Happened to the Chants
- History of the Church: Special Topics
- Why Catholicism: Mark's Journey
- Why Catholicism: Dave's Journey
- Important Encyclicals & TeachingsRerum Novarum, Humanae Vitae, Laudato Si', and other teachings such as Theology of the Body and Mulieris Dignitatem
These span registers from the aesthetic to the liturgical to the theoretical. Two ongoing strands run alongside them, the study of Catholic education and OCIA, next round, with thinker episodes (Chesterton first) rotating through.
David McKerracher, M.A. Founder of Theory Underground. Background in continental theory, existentialism, and phenomenology. Author of Waypoint: Timenergy, Critical Media Theory, and Culture War and Timenergy: Why You Have No Time or Energy (foreword by Slavoj Žižek).
Mark Griswold. Co-host. [Mark, your bio line goes here.]
Co-hosted. 50/50 of income after expenses. Both hosts can propose episodes. Ordo Amoris runs as a Theory Underground imprint on its own channel.