A New York moment: 

This week I talked to Jason Yu, a journalist who has covered Korean pop culture for the last decade, for a story I’m writing about KCON, a Korean pop culture convention that came to New York recently. Korean music has spread across the globe through social media, so now Yu’s primary way to report on K-pop is through his YouTube channel, Popsori, where about half of his audience is from North America. 

Twelve times my wife and I in our living room have shown small groups of WORLD readers how to become WORLD writers. During a week of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. reporting, writing, and editing, the students ranging in age from 27 to 72 have improved their understanding, story sense, and writing. I’ve just checked our masthead and seen that 31 are now WORLD correspondents.

From remarks to the 2019 State Department Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C.

Despite being a religiously based journalist writing for a religiously based magazine, I am a convert to the importance of reporting on religious oppression, telling the stories of persecuted people. I began covering wars as most any journalist would—starting in the 1990s with the Bosnian War and then the civil war in Sudan.

So a rabbi walks into a room full of journalists, turns a light on—and it’s no joke.

Lord Jonathan Sacks, for 22 years the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, was the keynote speaker for London’s 2019 Religion Media Festival this spring, one of those unheralded events that signifies more than it advertises. 

Emma Green covers religion and other spheres for The Atlantic, a venerable magazine that’s probably America’s best center-left publication. Here are edited and tightened excerpts of a Q&A that she and I had in April before students at Patrick Henry College.

The Pulitzer Prizes announced on Monday recognized breaking news coverage of mass shootings, investigative reporting on President Donald Trump’s finances, and the special contributions of the “Queen of Soul.” Aretha Franklin, who died in August of last year from pancreatic cancer, received a posthumous special citation from the Pulitzer board “for her indelible contribution to American music and culture.” Franklin is the first woman to receive the honorary Pulitzer.

The most popular episode of one of the most popular religion podcasts begins with a sound check: “Check one-two, we’re ready to go.”

That Sounds Fun podcast host Annie F. Downs and her guest, comedian John Crist, are recording in her father’s office, surrounded by boxes of tax returns, forced to share one microphone. For the next hour and a half, the two drift, as close friends would, from lighthearted jabs to the deep and serious, from their complicated dating lives as Christian celebrities to their respective rehab visits.