A Conversation with Peggy Noonan

The Russell Moore Show

“You have to read in order to develop your mind and develop your ability to think,” Peggy Noonan said. “It’s no good to say, ‘Oh, I can’t help that I was born in 1990 and everybody has a phone.’ Too bad. Put it down.”

For decades, Noonan has been a Wall Street Journal columnist and author, known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning commentary on politics and culture. She and Moore reflect on Noonan’s career both in journalism and as a speech writer in the Reagan Administration. They talk about Noonan’s faith, her love for Christian history, and her long-standing relationship to Roman Catholicism. The two discuss sexual scandals in both church and government, the power of the written word, and the way artists see the world. They consider the concerning potential of artificial intelligence, the value of reading in a world overrun by technology, and the importance of critical thinking in our modern political culture.

Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include:

• Peggy Noonan
• A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings by Peggy Noonan
• Walker Percy
• The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
• We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O’Toole
• Pascal’s Pensées
• “How to Find Grace After Disgrace”
• Abbey of Gethsemani
• Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood
• The Shadow
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• “The godfather of AI: why I left Google”

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