Shows / Chesterton Radio
Chesterton Radio
Welcome to Chesterton Radio—where stories, ideas, and wonder meet. Discover original fiction, Father Brown mysteries, classic radio drama, literary deep dives, thoughtful conversations, and daily Morning Prayer inspired by G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and the enduring tradition of Christian storytelling. Broadcasting from the little station on Commercial Street in Atchison, Kansas, Chesterton Radio offers a daily refuge from the noise of modern life. Whether you're drawn to timeless…
Episodes
Chesterton RadioListen with Gilbert: Digger — Can We Save the World?
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger gives Tom Cruise an unusual role: an enormously powerful man confronting a catastrophe he helped create—and convinced that he…
Chesterton RadioThe Open Door: When Chesterton Radio Became a Place
There was a time when listening to the radio required almost no decision at all. You turned it on. Something was already playing. Maybe it was a drama you had…
Chesterton RadioListen with Gilbert: Ask Me No Questions
Some old radio programs survive because everyone remembers them. Others survive almost by accident—and then, decades later, find an audience all over again…
Chesterton RadioIs It Worth Leaving the Comfortable Road? | Daybreak
Is college still worth it? And how do we know when something is worth leaving the familiar behind? On this Monday edition of Daybreak, we look ahead to the…
Chesterton RadioOnly Barbara: The Many Voices of Barbara Stanwyck
What happens to a great screen actress when you take away the camera? In this Listen with Gilbert Deep Dive, we hear Barbara Stanwyck across seven remarkably…
Chesterton RadioWhy Radio Drama Can Be Scarier Than Television
Television can show you the monster. Radio makes you imagine it. In this edition of Listen with Gilbert: Radio in Two, we explore one of the great secrets of…
Chesterton RadioThe Man in the Photograph: Gunsmoke’s “Cavalcade”
A deputy arrives in Dodge carrying a seventeen-year-old murder warrant and an old photograph. Matt Dillon recognizes the face immediately: it belongs to Doc…
Chesterton RadioThe Little Poor Man — St. Francis at 800 | Daybreak
Eight hundred years after the death of St. Francis of Assisi, why does the Little Poor Man still seem so alive? This Sunday on Daybreak, from The Little…
Chesterton RadioChesterton Radio University: St. Francis and the World Made New
How can a man who gives up so much become so joyful? In this opening episode of Chesterton Radio University, we explore G. K. Chesterton’s St. Francis of…
Chesterton RadioListen with Gilbert: The Hobbit Comes to Radio
Bilbo Baggins leaves the comfort of home and enters a world of riddles, songs, trolls, and dragons. In this Listen with Gilbert deep dive, we explore how the…
Chesterton RadioThe Animals’ God Experience
At Saturday morning at eleven, we open an old door again. Fr. Robert Griffin, C.S.C. — “Griff” — once filled this hour on WSND-FM at Notre Dame with his…
Chesterton RadioThe Man Who Came Back from the Dead | Daybreak
Seven years after Eleanor Vale’s husband supposedly died in a fire, a newspaper photograph arrives—and there he is among the living. This morning on Daybreak…
Chesterton RadioROM10: The Music That Woke the Radio Station
In the record library at WSND-FM at the University of Notre Dame, it was simply ROM10. Each morning, student announcer Paul would pull the record, cue the…
Chesterton RadioThe Return of the Catholic Craftsman
What if a young Catholic didn’t have to choose between Aquinas and a toolbox? In this Chesterton Radio deep dive, we visit two remarkable experiments in…
Chesterton RadioDaybreak: Angels, Machines & the Unseen World
It’s Friday morning at Chesterton Radio, and October 2 brings an unusual question: how much of reality lies beyond what we can see or measure? On today’s…
Chesterton RadioBeethoven’s First Symphony: The Young Man Who Kicked Open the Door
Vienna, 1800. Beethoven is twenty-nine years old, Mozart is gone, Haydn is the acknowledged master—and an ambitious young composer is about to unveil his first…
Chesterton RadioGI Jill vs. Tokyo Rose
Somewhere in the Pacific, an American serviceman turns the radio dial. From one station comes GI Jill—music, jokes, familiar voices and a little taste of home…
Chesterton RadioMystery Theater Companion: Honeymoon with Death
What if you returned from your honeymoon, reported your husband’s murder—and everyone insisted you had never been married? From the Little Station on…
Chesterton RadioDaybreak | Stories & Ideas Worth Waking Up For
Good morning, and welcome to Daybreak from the Little Station on Commercial Street in Atchison Kansas - Chesterton Radio. We begin October with a fresh look at…
Chesterton RadioArsenic and Old Lace: Saturday Night Theatre Companion
There are some plays that radio has to reinvent. And there are others that seem almost to have been waiting for radio all along. Arsenic and Old Lace is one of…
Chesterton RadioDaybreak
Good morning from The Little Station on Commercial Street. Daybreak is Chesterton Radio’s daily morning conversation, bringing together worthwhile stories from…
Chesterton RadioBefore the Collar: How Young Father Brown Learned to See the Truth | A Deep Dive
Before he became the quiet priest-detective who understood the secrets of the human heart, Father Brown was a boy who enjoyed being right. In this Chesterton…
Chesterton RadioWilliam Keenan: Spies, Saints & Secrets
A spy disappears into the shadows of Cold War Europe. A policeman walks a lonely beat. Three shepherd children in Portugal witness something that will change…
Chesterton RadioJ. B. Priestley: The Dangerous Art of Ordinary Life
An innocent question at a dinner party. A respectable suburban household hiding an extraordinary secret. A family haunted by the past. And a clock that may not…
Chesterton RadioNanci Griffith’s Other Voices: The Songs and Friends That Made Her
Nanci Griffith was one of America’s great songwriters. Yet at the height of her career, she did something remarkable: she turned the spotlight away from…
Chesterton RadioSherlock Holmes vs. Shakespeare
Sherlock Holmes or Shakespeare? Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce take on murder in the moonlight, the Fifth of November and Christmas at Baker Street. Richard…
Chesterton RadioWas St. Augustine Drinking? Aristotle vs. Augustine
Aristotle tells us how to become good: practice virtue, form good habits, develop character, and learn to desire what is worthy. Then St. Augustine arrives. He…
Chesterton RadioSuperman, Batman & the Secret of Kryptonite
Before kryptonite became one of the most famous weaknesses in popular culture, it was part of an extraordinary chapter in The Adventures of Superman on radio…
Chesterton RadioPadre Pio: The Flying Friar
Padre Pio: The Flying Friar During World War II, Allied bomber pilots flying over southern Italy reportedly encountered something extraordinary: a Capuchin…
Chesterton RadioCandy Matson & Carter Brown: Two Detectives, Two Continents, One Hard-Boiled World
Candy Matson lived on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Carter Brown never existed. Yet put their mysteries side by side, and they seem to walk the same…
Chesterton RadioThe Last Mysteries: One Last Case, One Last Chance, One Last Knock
The Last Mysteries: One Last Case, One Last Chance, One Last Knock There is something irresistible about the word last. The last case. The last escape. The…
Chesterton RadioMargery Allingham: The Strange World of Albert Campion | Golden Age Mystery
Agatha Christie gave us the puzzle. Dorothy L. Sayers gave us Lord Peter Wimsey. But Margery Allingham created something stranger. In this Chesterton Radio…
Chesterton RadioThe Thing That Cries in the Night
A baby cries somewhere inside a Hollywood mansion. There is only one problem. No baby lives there. And when the crying begins, something terrible seems to…
Chesterton RadioTHE DETECTIVE WHO SANG
What if Philip Marlowe stopped halfway through a case... and sang a song? In 1946, radio tried something almost impossible to imagine today. Carl Brisson —…
Chesterton RadioIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE REALLY GETTING A MEDICAL SCHOOL?
IS BENEDICTINE REALLY GETTING A MEDICAL SCHOOL? Two years ago, a medical school at Benedictine College sounded like an extraordinarily ambitious idea. Today…
Chesterton RadioMATTHEW THE PUBLICAN
He was sitting at the customs post. To respectable society, Matthew was already a known quantity: a publican, a tax collector, a collaborator, a sinner. The…
Chesterton RadioA MURDER OF QUALITY
Before Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Smiley investigated a very different kind of enemy. Not a Soviet mole. Not an intelligence network. A murder at an…
Chesterton RadioWELCOME TO UTOPIA
What if someone offered you the perfect place to live? Beautiful surroundings. Organic meals. No commute. Shared transportation. Recreation outside your door…
Chesterton RadioDYATLOV PASS
In February 1959, nine experienced hikers disappeared into the frozen wilderness of the Soviet Union’s Ural Mountains. Weeks later, searchers found their tent…
Chesterton RadioWHITEHALL 1212: THIS IS SCOTLAND YARD
“This is Scotland Yard…” With those words, Whitehall 1212 opened the door to murder investigations drawn from the files of Scotland Yard—and to one of the most…
Chesterton RadioCAPTAIN BEFORE KIRK
Before James T. Kirk ever sat in the captain’s chair, there was Christopher Pike. In 1964, Jeffrey Hunter stepped onto the bridge of the Enterprise for “The…
Chesterton RadioGREENLAND: WHEN WEATHER BECAME A WEAPON
Before Greenland became a fixture of modern geopolitics, millions of radio listeners already knew that this vast frozen island mattered. In the 1930s…
Chesterton RadioTHE BLUE LAMP
Before British television had Dixon of Dock Green, there was The Blue Lamp. Released by Ealing Studios in 1950, The Blue Lamp took audiences into the streets…
Chesterton RadioJACK BENNY: SUNDAY NIGHTS AT SEVEN
For decades, Sunday evening belonged to Jack Benny. Millions of Americans gathered around their radios to enter a wonderfully familiar world of Mary…
Chesterton RadioDownstairs at The Nazz
In the basement of Notre Dame’s LaFortune Student Center was a little room called The Nazz. On weekend nights, students crowded in to hear other students play…
Chesterton RadioWHEN MUSICAL WORLDS COLLIDE
Sometime around 1981, a record arrived at WSND-FM at Notre Dame that made everyone in the room laugh. John Denver and Plácido Domingo. On paper, it seemed…
Chesterton RadioDo Not Open for 5,000 Years
In 1939, as the New York World’s Fair promised a dazzling “World of Tomorrow,” Americans buried a time capsule intended to remain sealed for 5,000 years. At…
Chesterton RadioSherlock Holmes and the Unfinished Engine
A steam locomotive is being built. Someone appears determined to sabotage it. But Sherlock Holmes begins to suspect the opposite: what if the saboteur is…
Chesterton RadioCan a Machine Make Something Beautiful?
Can artificial intelligence make something beautiful—or can it only imitate beauty? Catholic songwriter Justin West writes the words, then uses AI to create…
Chesterton RadioTHE OTHER SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Today we remember W. Somerset Maugham for Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge and The Painted Veil. But there was another Somerset Maugham—one of the most…
Chesterton RadioThe Stories Hiding Inside Meat Loaf
Jim Steinman rarely wrote songs that felt like just songs. Performed with the enormous voice and theatrical presence of Meat Loaf, they became little worlds of…
Chesterton RadioONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL
Before anyone knew what the Shire, Gandalf, Gollum, or Mordor were supposed to look like, listeners had to imagine them. In 1955, barely a year after The…
Chesterton RadioNevil Shute: The Engineer Who Became a Storyteller
Before Nevil Shute became one of the twentieth century’s most popular novelists, Nevil Shute Norway was an aeronautical engineer—helping build the great R100…
Chesterton RadioFootball on the Radio
There is something about football that belongs on the radio. The murmur of the crowd. The marching band somewhere beyond the microphone. The quarterback under…
Chesterton RadioPygmalion: The Play That Became My Fair Lady
George Bernard Shaw thought he knew exactly what Pygmalion was about. His audiences had other ideas. What begins as an outrageous experiment—can Professor…
Chesterton RadioTwo Voices on the Same Road
Some musical partnerships seem planned. Others feel as though two long roads simply happened to meet. In this edition of Nocturne Nightflight, we travel into…
Chesterton RadioDoctor Who Beyond the TARDIS: The Radio Plays of Doctor Who’s Writers
What happens when you take Doctor Who, turn off the picture, remove the sets and special effects—and leave the storytelling? Something remarkable happens. The…
Chesterton RadioThe Fatal Flaw | The Saturday Night Theatre Companion
What would you sacrifice to write the book everyone wants to read? In this edition of The Saturday Night Theatre Companion, we return to the BBC’s 1982 radio…
Chesterton RadioNo Hiding Place | You Can Escape the Past. But Can You Hide from It?
What happens when the life you’ve built depends upon a past that must never be discovered? On January 10, 1974, CBS Radio Mystery Theater opened the creaking…
Chesterton RadioGet to the Fireboat
In 1999, a wonderfully unlikely group of New Yorkers did something that made very little practical sense. They bought an old fireboat. The John J. Harvey had…