Leah Libresco's Blog, page 22

Hamilton Is Blazingly Fast And I Can Prove It

I got to combine my love of musicals and math nerdery when I covered Hamilton‘s lyrical density for FiveThirtyEight this week. If “Hamilton” were sung at the pace of the other Broadway shows I looked at, it would take four to six hours (Miranda’s guestimate was off by half). At the slowest paces, “Hamilton” would only [Read More...]

7QT: Costumes, Communal Singing, and Hamilton

— 1 — A friend of mine is looking for good semi-pregnant Halloween costumes (she’s not big enough to go as a globe, as she hoped).  I don’t have that much to suggest (maybe you all have ideas for her?) but I do have a roundup of excellent parent-baby costumes.  My favorite is the child [Read More...]

Pope Francis And Catholics Disagree Deeply On the Death Penalty

Over at FiveThirtyEight, I’m covering the split between Pope Francis’s adamant opposition to the death penalty and American Catholics comfort with it: In a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of Americans said they supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Catholics were a little less likely than other Americans to express [Read More...]

Praying With Strangers, Now That The Pope’s Gone

The best part of the papal visit for me wasn’t the pope himself, but all the people he drew together in his wake.  I’m at First Things today, talking about how to keep making connections to all the people who filled the streets, now that we can’t rely on one big event to introduce us to [Read More...]

Pope Francis Retold Our American History

Catherine Addington has a great piece up today at The American Conservative on the way Pope Francis spoke to American Catholics, and emphasized how our American identity can be a gift we bring to the church: In his remarks to Pope Francis at Independence Hall, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia name-dropped Alexander Hamilton in praising the contributions [Read More...]

It’s Hard To Be A Priest In America, Spread Thinner Than Ever

I’ve got more popebloggery at FiveThirtyEight, this time, looking at Pope Francis’s guidance to his brother bishops on pastoral care, and how the demographics of American Catholicism make his call hard to live up to: In his final exhortation to his brother bishops in Washington, Pope Francis urged them to find ways to encourage the spiritual growth [Read More...]

How Do You Quantify the Francis Effect?

Over at FiveThirtyEight, I’ve rounded up Catholic nerds and data nerds to try to answer the question “How can you tell if Francis (or any other Pope) is a success?”  I actually made a bet with a friend on the success of Francis’s papacy not long after he became pontiff (and the bet comes due in [Read More...]

Ridiculously Over-Engineered Approaches To Empathy

When I was complaining about a plane delay on facebook, a friend of mine generously bought me a kindle copy of Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone, and told me that I might particularly enjoy it as a recovering Stoic and Kantian.  She was right. I also liked how much it reminded me of Ben Hoffman’s recent post [Read More...]

A Sondheim Song for Your Papal Mixtape

My parish started its Adult Sunday School (taught by Dominican friars) this past weekend, and we kicked off the semester with a discussion of the Pope’s encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.  I’m not about to summarize the whole encyclical or even the whole class, but I am pleased to tell you that, if you’re building [Read More...]

I’m So Glad I Watched Colbert’s Biden Interview

I don’t have much to add to it, I just figured a lot of you would enjoy watching it, but might not have done it yet.  I got all verklempt.