Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host and the content director here at Word on Fire, Catholic Ministries. Joining me is Bishop Robert Barron.

And I know Bishop a couple episodes ago. You said we need to cool it on the hey greetings like hey Bishop.

Yeah, I never thought of it till this person. Hey, that's just out of there. Why this trendy use of hey and I think I guess it's trendy.

Yes, I won't say hey anymore. I'll say hello, Brandon.

I'll bow I'll bow and formally greet you as your excellency. Hey, before we begin here. Hey, yeah, hey, before we begin here.

I like to ask this every now and then. I don't think I've asked you in a while. But what books are you reading? I know a lot of people love to hear any good things you're reading right now.

Well, I don't know if I call this good. I am reading that book about the Vatican and homosexuality and all this. It just came out a short time ago.

And not that I'm savoring it and I don't think it's a very good book, but I am reading it because I feel it's important to get through.

Let's see, what else am I reading more more technically? I'm reading the Churchill biography more for fun. You know, this wonderful thousand page, a new biography Winston Churchill.

What am I reading theologically there so I know I know it's this new study of of Carol Voitt was personalism and the study of the acting person his books I just started that.

And then I just ordered you got it for me of the Eleanor stumps new book on a tone. So that's coming soon. So there's some of things I'm working on.

Well, this episode we're going to devote to the future of the word on fire show this show, the podcast.

What originally began is just an audio podcast now kind of has morphed into both audio and video. But I want to go all the way back first to the early days of word on fire.

I'm talking 10, 15 years ago. One of the first things that you sought out to do was to get your homilies on the radio. It's shared that story with us.

That's how it really started is I you know kind of reach for the old tech I suppose I thought, you know, we should do something with media and try to get this out more broadly. And so I went to WGN radio, which is a big radio station in Chicago.

And I just asked them, they didn't know who I was and they had no connection with them. I just said, what would it cost to to have a radio or a homily program on WGN.

And they said, well, the only time available is 515 on Sunday morning and it would cost you $50,000 for the year. So that's that's what I found out. And it didn't sound real promising whenever I mentioned it, people would just laugh, you know, who's up at 515 on Sunday morning.

But I went to the parish and I asked for the money and the people gave it to me. So that's how we started and that went on for several years with WGN.

Same time, I remember the Lutheran hour was after me and I said, hey, anyway, I could get, you know, the slot at 6 a.m. No, no, that's a Lutheran hour.

And I guess they had a corner on that. So I then expanded to relevant radio, which is a Catholic radio network. So we stopped WGN after maybe three or four years, but that's how I got going.

You know, we still get emails from people who said, I was there right at the beginning. I was listening to those homilies on the radio. But as soon as this whole podcasting revolution came along, it really highlighted the deficiency in some ways of the radio outreach because it requires somebody to be at a specific place at a specific time, right.

Yeah, and I always go back to you know, Fulton Sheen, I would the advantage of Fulton Sheen was there only were a handful of TV networks available. So if you got on one of those, you had a big audience. But sure, he had to, he had to rely on the fact that people at a particular time could tune into the radio or than the television.

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