Socrates in the City

What does it mean to be made in the imago Dei, the image of God, and how does our commitment to constructing our own identities obscure this fundamental truth? In this episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, Carl Trueman returns to explore the desecration of man and the loss of enchantment in modern society. From shifting perspectives on women’s biology, the advent of the reproductive pill, and the cultural reimagining of motherhood, Trueman explores how our understanding of human nature has been reshaped by technology and the pursuit of personal autonomy. Through his work, Trueman explores the chief differences between men and women, the tension between technological progress and the natural order, and the limits of Protestant theology in addressing the gaps in Christian anthropology; this conversation invites us to reconsider where human flourishing truly begins—and whether a society that seeks to transcend nature risks losing sight of what makes us human.The post Carl Trueman and Mary Harrington: Are Humans Flourishing or Regressing? first appeared on Socrates in the City.

In this Episode of Socrates in the City, host Eric Metaxas is joined by Martin Gurri, former CIA analyst and author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, to consider how the information revolution has transformed our political and cultural landscape. As technology has accelerated the spread of stories, ideas, and grievances, traditional structures of authority have increasingly come under suspicion. But what happens when the public’s revolt against authority becomes untethered from any shared sense of reality? Gurri explores the nihilistic roots of this revolt, the strange luxury of detachment from consequences, and the ways those least affected by sweeping cultural changes can sometimes impose increasingly restrictive rules on those who bear the greatest costs. This conversation explores Gurri’s work in his blog The Fifth Wave, and traces how technological advancement is reshaping not only the way we communicate, but the way we understand authority, truth, and one another.The post Eric Metaxas and CIA Analyst Martin Gurri: What Happens When We Stop Trusting Authority? first appeared on Socrates in the City.

What happens when the myth of human progress begins to crack? In this meeting of the minds, Socrates in the City co-contributors Mary Harrington and Joe Loconte explore the intellectual and cultural aftermath of the First World War—and the profound questions it raised about technology, human nature, and the promise of progress. Beginning with Loconte’s first book, which examines the shattering of the optimistic vision of progress after World War I, the conversation turns to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, whose work wrestled with many of the same anxieties about modernity, power, and the limits of human mastery. From “That Hideous Strength” and Lewis’s prescient concerns about automation and the manipulation of human thought to America’s enduring fascination with “The Lord of the Rings,” Harrington and Loconte ask what these stories reveal about the way we understand ourselves—and whether the myth of progress was ever truly shattered in the first place.The post Joseph Loconte and Mary Harrington: Was the Myth of Progress Ever Really Shattered? first appeared on Socrates in the City.

In this episode of The Revolution, Socrates in the City travels to the historic Conference House—the very room where General Howe, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin once gathered to debate what might come next—to interview Andrew O’Shaughnessy. He joins host Eric Metaxas to discuss his acclaimed book “The Men Who Lost America.” From the complexities of George III and his evolving views of the American colonies to the shifting American perception of the king throughout the Revolution, O’Shaughnessy revisits the personalities, miscalculations, and failures of British leadership that ultimately cost Britain the war—and its American empire. Along the way, they explore the infamous mischianza, the lavish Philadelphia celebration held in honor of General Howe, and the deepening divisions and civil unrest that fractured colonial society. Throughout this conversation emerges a fascinating portrait of a revolution not simply won by American ingenuity, but lost through the ambitions, rivalries, and misjudgments of those who sought to preserve the British Empire.The post Eric Metaxas and Andrew O’Shaughnessy: How Did Britain Lose America? first appeared on Socrates in the City.

In this episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, she is joined by D.W. Pasulka, professor of religious studies and author of American Cosmic and Encounters, to explore her newest book “The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny” and the strange and often overlooked relationship between religion, technology, and the uncanny. The conversation moves from her academic journey—from studying purgatory and Marian visions to investigating modern technological developments and the cultural phenomenon of UFOs—raising the provocative possibility that what we once understood as religious visions may now be interpreted through the language of technology. Drawing on René Girard’s work on religion, violence, and human imitation, Pasulka reaches even further back to Plato and Socrates, whose ancient questions about perception, knowledge, and reality seem remarkably prescient in an age increasingly shaped by technological spaces. The two explore the implications of Plato’s Cave, which describes a world in which shadows could be mistaken for reality—who are the modern puppet masters, and what happens when the technologies shaping our “cave” are increasingly invisible, immersive, and powerful? Are we still watching shadows on the wall, or have we begun to build the cave ourselves?The post D.W. Pasulka and Mary Harrington: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny first appeared on Socrates in the City.