Originally aired on October 23, 2025

Should we be afraid of Halloween? What about death? What about just…the past? Whether it's our own trauma, fears of the occult, family history, or that big scary word tradition, many of us feel caught between two extremes: either cutting ourselves off from it all, or feeling so surrounded by it that we feel trapped.

In this episode, we journey back to medieval England to discover what Hallowtide—the three-day feast that became Halloween—actually looked like, and why it might hold keys to a healthier relationship with all of it–death, tradition, and the past.

Along the way, we'll mythbust everything you think you know about Halloween, explore the meaning of “honor your father and mother,” and discover practical ways to connect our own stories to the Great Story.

Sarah Howell is joined by Brian Brown and Caroline Williams to explore the story of Sister Constance, who stayed in Memphis during the devastating 1878 yellow fever epidemic while much of the city fled. What could make someone walk toward danger when everyone else is running the other way? And what does her story have to do with the choices we make in much quieter moments?

Along the way, they uncover a surprising connection between Constance and another Christian who, years earlier and an ocean away, stood firm when his convictions made him an outsider.

Sarah, Brian, and Caroline consider how fear, attention, mentors, stories, and small choices shape us long before the moment when everything is suddenly at stake. Drawing on C. S. Lewis, Augustine, the story of Esther, and the lives of the saints, they ask what it means to keep turning toward what is good, true, and beautiful—even when the world around you is telling you to look away.

Hosts: Brian Brown, Sarah Howell, Caroline Williams

What is a man actually for at home — past "protect and provide"?

Brian Brown is joined by Sarah Howell, Jeremiah England, and Matthew Clark to build a theology of domestic masculinity anchored in St. Joseph, the only man in Scripture who never speaks and whose entire vocation is guardianship of an ordinary household.

Using Julie Canlis's four movements of Christ's re-creation (Born, Baptized, Crucified, Ascended) and Dante's Cacciaguida — who remembers, commissions, and blesses his descendant in the Paradiso — this episode names two failure modes (the controlling tyrant and the checked-out buddy-dad) and finds a third way rooted in self-gift rather than dominance or absence.

Part two of a two-part conversation on the theology of the ordinary, from the Anselm Society's Imagination Redeemed podcast.