The Catholic Guide to Sustainable Living

In this episode, Samuel and Anna sit down with doula and author Mary Haseltine to explore the beauty, challenge, and profound meaning of childbirth. Drawing on years of experience supporting mothers, Mary shares how birth is designed by God and how fear has shaped modern perceptions of childbirth, and what women can do to prepare for birth with confidence and peace. Together, they discuss Catholic anthropology, natural birth, the role of fathers, the need for more Catholic midwives, and how families can reclaim a deeper trust in the wisdom built into the human body.Whether you're expecting a child, supporting someone who is, or simply interested in what it means to be human, this conversation offers a compelling vision of birth as both deeply natural and deeply spiritual.Resources:Mary Haseltine's Book: Made for This: The Catholic Mom's Guide to Birth Made for This Resources

How can Christians properly engage with climate change? Dr. Samuel Shephard talks with Lorna Gold, co-founder of the Laudato Si' Movement, about Pope Francis’ vision for caring for creation. They explore how "ecological conversion," sustainable living, and community engagement make environmental stewardship a natural expression of faith.

What does it mean to truly belong to the land — and what do we lose when that connection is severed? Sebastian Morello, philosopher at St. Mary's University in London and author of Woodland Philosophy: Meditations on Hunting, Hiking and Holiness, joins Dr. Samuel Shephard to explore what it means to be a country person in an age of urban disconnection. Drawing on his Catholic faith, his grandfather's stalking knives, and years of managing the landscape, Sebastian makes the case that country people possess a kind of embodied, irreplaceable knowledge — and that Westminster's constant interference is quietly destroying the very countryside it claims to protect.Woodland Philosophy is available wherever books are sold.

Dr. Samuel Shephard talks with Dr. Joel Stroot about permaculture through a Catholic lens. Dr. Stroot explores how sustainable design principles connect to creation care, stewardship, and our relationship with the natural world.

Dr. Samuel Shephard talks with Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meat Smith about raising, killing, and eating animals the right way. Brandon teaches people to slaughter and process pigs on the domestic scale—in the backyard, the old way—and argues that this work helps us develop virtue and understand what it means to be human.The conversation covers why "doing what you love" is overrated, the structural impossibility of real community in our car-dependent world, and how prioritizing Mass and the sacraments might be the key to restoring authentic Catholic villages. Brandon makes the case that we're all naturally equipped to be "meat smiths"—we just need to activate that latent potential.