Leah Libresco's Blog, page 20

“The Opposite of Kicking People In the Shins” and more from my Crossroads talk

I had a great time visiting the Crossroads Cultural Center last night to talk about my conversion and the witness my friends offered me.  And now they’ve got the video of the talk up! Part 1: Part 2:   And they’ve got the Q&A up too! Part 1: Part 2:

I’m in NYC to talk about explaining your faith

This Wednesday, I’ll be at the Crossroads Cultural Center in New York City to talk about my own conversion and ways to answer questions/have engaging conversations about the Catholic faith.  The event is free and open to the public, and here are all the details:   When: Dec 16, 7pm Where: Crossroads Auditorium (125 Maiden [Read More...]

My Favorite Books of 2015

I’ve put together a list of my favorite books I read for the first time this year (here’s last year’s list).  I’ve shared five of my favorites as part of First Things‘s favorite books of the year, and I’ve got the remaining seven favorites listed in chronological order of my reading below. (And, of course, [Read More...]

Demands for Diverse Faculty and Trigger Warnings At Colleges

I’ve done two recent pieces for FiveThirtyEight looking at activist movements on college campus. Here Are The Demands From Students Protesting Racism At 51 Colleges A list of formal demands made at 51 U.S. campuses has been collected on a website called The Demands. FiveThirtyEight sorted through the list, categorizing each request and looking for patterns [Read More...]

God & Comics invited me on to discuss webcomics

I had a lot of fun spending an hour with God and Comics’ three nerdy priests as we discussed the way comics change when they move online, our favorite weird niche strips made possible by the internet, and different stories’ different views of what it means to be a hero. Here’s the link to the episode. [Read More...]

Big Discounts on Arriving At Amen Today

If you’ve been meaning to check out my book on prayer, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer, today’s a great day to pick up a copy (or grab one as a gift for a friend).  The kindle edition is $4 on Amazon. If you’d prefer a paper copy, Ave Maria Press [Read More...]

Discussing the Limits Of Religion Polling on What’s The Point?

I had a great time talking to Jody Avirgan (my colleague at FiveThirtyEight) and Emma Green of The Atlantic about the limits of statistics to tell us interesting things about religion.  (This was the first time I got to meet Emma in person, and she’s just as sharp and delightful as her performance on this [Read More...]

Mainline Protestant Churches Offer A Warmer Welcome to Whites

Over at FiveThirtyEight, I’ve got a rundown of a new paper that tried to check how receptive different Christian denominations were to new members of different races: A team led by Bradley Wright, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, sent emails to more than 3,000 churches across America. Each email was [Read More...]

Mallory Ortberg Interviewed Me About Converting

If you’ve come here from the Toast, and want to know more about my conversion: you might like the series of three posts I wrote before my baptism (which rely heavily on musical theatre).  You might also want to take a look at my book, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Answer, [Read More...]

Covering Religion Surveys as Both a Catholic and a Statistician

I’m over at First Things today, to talk about how I cover religion statistics as both a Catholic and a journalist (two roles both oriented toward truth). In a way, these religion surveys remind me of the perennial studies of how few Americans believe that the earth goes round the sun, that evolution shaped human [Read More...]