Episode 1: Live in Nashville

In this episode, we introduce new co-host Matt Wheeler, a singer-songwriter from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. John and Matt talk about Matt's experience turning Wendell Berry's short stories into an album, how Matt answers the question: "What Wendell Berry book should I read first?", and how he started corresponding with the Berrys. Then John and Matt preview Season 4 and reveal the book they will be discussing first: Berry's forthcoming essay collection, Dispatches from Rural America (out October 27). Next episode: We will be discussing the essay "Against Killing Children," the first essay in Berry's new collection Dispatches from Rural America.

In this episode, John announces the relaunch of the podcast with a new cohost, singer-songwriter Matt Wheeler. The first episode with Matt comes out on Tuesday, October 13. John also reads an article that he wrote for Substack in the days after Wendell Berry’s death on August 31.

In this episode of The Membership, David and John discuss a book that is an unusual in the Port William series -- it's about a mouse, and is sometimes classified as a children's book -- but still feels right at home. That book? Whitefoot: A Story from the Center from the World, by Wendell Berry. We talk about the experience of compressing the imagination to the size of a mouse, where this book sits among Berry's other works, and why the realization that one lives at the center of the world is "the world's profoundest thought." And much more.

In his poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” Wendell Berry calls the reader to “Practice resurrection.” In today’s episode, we discuss one of Berry’s Sabbath poems. It has a Christmas theme that could be summarized this way: “Practice incarnation.”

In this episode, we interview singer-songwriter Matt Wheeler about his new album, A Hard History of Love. That album is inspired by five short stories in Berry’s story collection, That Distant Land. We talk about the process of writing songs inspired by great literature, about some of our favorite Port William characters, and what “membership” looks like in Matt’s life. UPDATE: The Kickstarter for Matt’s album release is now fully funded. All backers will now receive a print of Ned Bustard’s cover art for the album. The Kickstarter ends on August 25 at 7:15 a.m. Eastern. Kickstarter for A Hard History of Love: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hardhistory/a-hard-history-of-love-by-matt-wheeler