Leah Libresco's Blog, page 29

Here’s what a Jesuit Priest has to say about my book!

Tomorrow’s the official debut date of Arriving At Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer, my book on learning prayer as a foreign language, relying on secular analogies and sources of  beauty to make sense of Catholic spirituality.  And the first published review is already out! Fr. David C. Paternostro, SJ took a look [Read More...]

What Duties Come With Wealth? [Radio Readings]

Looking for the Ideological Turing Test results? I could still use about 15 more participants, particularly in the second round, so please recruit your friends to play. You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streamed Saturday at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm.  And it’s now available to download and stream. Every [Read More...]

HIV Successes and Space Launch Failures

Here’s what I’ve been covering at FiveThirtyEight this past week (and, coming up this week, I’ve got a piece in the works that gives me the chance to mention rinderpest!)   The U.K.’s New At-Home HIV Test Is Better Than Anything We Have In The U.S. In the U.K., checking your HIV status is now [Read More...]

7QT: Avengers, Revengers, and Re-stagers

— 1 — Guess where I was last night? After the movie, a couple girls asked to take a picture with me and then said, “Are you a student at Georgetown, too?” “Nope!” I said, “I’m an adult!” And this is what adults do: — 2 — In other fictional universe news, I tend to [Read More...]

Jen Fulwiler and I discuss rationalization, forgiveness, and my new book!

I got to talk to Jen Fulwiler, the author of Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It on her SiriusXM show today.  If you’d like to tune in, Jen’s show repeats on the Catholic Channel on Thursday (today!) at 4p ET; Friday 12a and 6a (too early for me) and [Read More...]

Does Effective Altruism Dehumanize People You Give To?

I’m discussing Effective Altruism and (possibly!) defusing some concerns about this growing, evidence-based movement in a conversation with Matt Gerken at Philanthropy Daily.  I really appreciation Matt raising some common qualms people have about Effective Altruism (What does this mean for local causes? What about goods that are hard to measure) and having me over [Read More...]

Here are the words my copyeditor was warned about

Once my book, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer, (out May 7th! Tell your friends) was written, there was a lot of editing to come.  At one point, my editor wrote up a style sheet — basically a document warning the copyeditor about any deliberate deviations from normal spelling/grammar and as [Read More...]

Discussing my book (and ballroom dance and bridges) in Sydney!

While I was in Australia, I had the pleasure of speaking at a Theology on Tap in Sydney.  This was the first talk I’ve done specifically on my book, Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer (out next week!) and I had a great time talking about my approach to prayer and fielding [Read More...]

Running the numbers on smokers, migrants, cancer, and drones

This past week at FiveThirtyEight, I’ve been covering the grim calculus of migrant ships, the difficult data on drones, smoking laws, and cancer tests.  Read on below!   Migrants Trying To Cross The Mediterranean Are Leaving One Risk For Another When countries confront refugees that aren’t in mortal danger, they’ve found ways to avoid allowing [Read More...]

An Adjective that Feels Like Home [Radio Readings]

You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm.  I’ll update this post when the episode is available to download and stream. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and (this week) failed Lenten penances [Read More...]