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Uncommon Sense

Uncommon Sense

By: Society of GK Chesterton
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The Podcast of the Society of GKC, where we talk about everything, and everything else, with a Chestertonian perspective. The podcast is hosted by Grettelyn Darkey and Albert Saenz. Want to give us feedback? Email uncommonsense@chesterton.orgSociety of G.K. Chesterton (297168) Spirituality
Episodes
  • The Chestertonian Writer on the Road to Canonization

    The Chestertonian Writer on the Road to Canonization
    Jul 21 2026
    On the heels of the announcement that Sigrid Undset's cause for canonization has been opened, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski consider the Nobel laureate through the lens of G.K. Chesterton—the writer she admired, collected, and translated into Norwegian before visiting him at his home in Beaconsfield. Received into the Church just two years after G.K. Chesterton, Undset shared his conviction that sanctity belongs to the ordinary life of the laity, and her vivid portraits of medieval saints carry the same paradoxical spirit that made Chesterton's own work startle and delight. In This Episode: How Sigrid Undset's path into the Church paralleled G.K. Chesterton's—two converts of the same era drawn by the medieval and the BaroqueWhy G.K. Chesterton and Undset both located holiness in the vocation of the laity rather than the cloisterThe debt Undset owed to writers in G.K. Chesterton's orbit—Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World and the English Catholic revival Undset's translation of G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man into Norwegian, and her reading of his distributismThe shared Chestertonian paradox in Undset's fiction: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange Resources Mentioned: The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton Gilbert Magazine Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson Chapters: 00:00: Welcome and the news of Sigrid Undset's cause 02:12: Who Sigrid Undset was 06:20: What publishers wanted versus what readers loved 09:58: The Willa Cather parallel 11:51: Belief, doubt, and the interior life of the novel 16:41: Undset's road to conversion and Robert Hugh Benson 23:20: The radical cost of her conversion 24:04: Dorothy Day and saints who don't fit the mold 27:09: Collecting and translating G.K. Chesterton 30:38: When Undset met G.K. Chesterton 33:19: Holiness for the laity 38:15: Why Undset and G.K. Chesterton speak to today FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios
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    43 mins
  • The Idea That Makes America More Like a Church Than a Nation

    The Idea That Makes America More Like a Church Than a Nation
    Jul 14 2026
    This episode is a re-air. For Independence Day, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski set conversation aside and let G.K. Chesterton speak. This special gathers a curated series of Chesterton's reflections on America—the idea of the citizen, the creed at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, the nature of true patriotism, the true soldier, and the difference between the right sort of patriot and the wrong sort of politician—woven together with the strains of the nation's great patriotic songs. Drawn largely from What I Saw in America, they reveal a Chesterton who saw the American experiment more clearly than most Americans do. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton called America "the one great state in the world in which many types and races are united by one idea"—the idea of the citizen—and "almost more like a great church than merely a great nation"G.K. Chesterton's case that America is "the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed," one set forth in the Declaration of Independence with "dogmatic and even theological lucidity"What G.K. Chesterton meant by true patriotism, and why he held that "my country, right or wrong" is something "no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case"G.K. Chesterton on the true soldier, who "fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him"G.K. Chesterton's account of "Americanization"—the making of "a nation out of exiles"—and why he found the process unlike anything else in the world Resources Mentioned: What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton (Special Semiquincentennial Edition) The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:51: America United by the Idea of the Citizen 01:28: Tradition and the Presence of Penn and Franklin 02:13: Equality, Patriotism, and the Divine Basis of Democracy 03:54: Testing Patriotism Through the Old Songs 04:48: The Only Nation Founded on a Creed 06:24: The True Soldier and the War Ballads 07:35: Americanization—A Nation Made of Exiles 08:51: Fighting the Representatives We Choose 09:38: Liberty and Obedience FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios
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    11 mins
  • Five Myths You Probably Believe About G.K. Chesterton, Demolished

    Five Myths You Probably Believe About G.K. Chesterton, Demolished
    Jul 7 2026
    Everyone thinks they know G.K. Chesterton: the beer-loving, pipe-smoking, gluttonous genius who tossed off masterpieces without breaking a sweat. Joe Grabowski and Grettelyn Darkey take those popular myths apart one by one, and the man who emerges from behind the legend is more remarkable than the caricature—a relentless working journalist, a trained artist, a temperate wine-and-water drinker, and a mind so restless it composed whole paragraphs before pen ever touched paper. In This Episode: Why Chesterton was first and foremost a journalist—not a "writer" in the grand literary sense—and why grasping that changes how you read everything else he wroteThe truth about his writing process: not effortless genius, but a hard worker who composed and revised so thoroughly in his head that the finished prose only looked slapdash Journalism school or art school? His years at the Slade School of Art, the history courses alongside it, and how training as a sketch artist shaped the way he built an argumentThe drinking myth: a water-and-wine man at home, a generous buyer of rounds in company, and genuinely temperate—not the patron saint of aleThe real story behind his size and his cigars: absent-minded grazing rather than gluttony, likely underlying health conditions, and why he smoked cigars and never a pipe Resources Mentioned: Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward I Also Had My Hour: An Alternative Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist What I Saw in America: Special Semiquincentennial Edition by G.K. Chesterton Chapters: 00:00: Sorting the man from the myths 01:40: Was Chesterton really a "writer"? 06:43: The truth about how he wrote 11:37: Journalism school or art school? 17:55: Chesterton the sketch artist 21:44: The patron saint of ale? 28:02: Did Chesterton overeat? 40:36: Pipe or cigar? 45:52: The man behind the myths FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios
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    50 mins
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