“I get far more emails and phone calls about things like immigration, issues that are more politically controversial.”

Rather than provoking derision, these shows inspire a sense of empathy, a broadening of horizons.

A good newsletter is like a message in a bottle, a voice that cuts through the noise.

Do we see ourselves as having an obligation to our neighbor or not?

“About 40 percent of the people who come here speak English better than Spanish,” Father Murphy says. “They’re all Mexicans, but they got deported after being in the states 30, 40 years. Sometimes they’ll come up and ask, ‘Do you speak English?’”

ABC faced a decision: invest in stories that speak to our best selves, or make a big splash with a show that draws out our worst instincts.

Among both listeners and staff, one can find those who were born and raised in the United States or moved here at a young age and those who are new to the country; those who have papers and those who do not or whose parents do not.

Gambino’s new video for ‘This is America’ is an experience of radical interruption, one that O’Connor would have appreciated.

“People who suffer from severe and persistent mental illnesses are among the most misunderstood, ignored and unjustly stigmatized members of our society,” the bishops write.

In California, Catholic opponents of the death penalty are trying to protect the largest population of inmates awaiting execution in the Western Hemisphere.