The current Friday Feature
duration 42:01
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Latest wisdom from Sound Thinking
- Layers in “Logos”
Peter Kreeft on the metaphysical, psychological, and linguistic referents of logos - Abandoning answers to the “why?” questions
Antón Barba-Kay on AI and the triumph of the merely practical - Creation, in harmony with the Logos
Rowan Williams on the Logos and the diverse logoi that mirror it - Social(izing) medium
Todd Gitlin on the ways in which television and other media have shaped our ways of having emotions - Looking past the juicy distraction
Marshall McLuhan on the necessity of evaluating how — not just what — various media convey
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Related Features
Truth lives in language
Speaking the word in love
Our world’s linguistic ailments
Technologies and language
Meet one of our Partners
Cultural issues are central for the work of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America. The Institute considers the study of culture, in particular the culture of modernity as developed in America, to be an integral part of the clarification of fundamental theological concepts. The Institute engages this cultural study in light of the history of the Church and Christian thought, with special attention to the writings of the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II.
The aim of such study is to generate a “culture of life”: a culture whose members “see life in its deeper meaning, its beauty and its invitation to freedom and responsibility”; “who do not presume to take possession of reality, but instead accept it as a gift, discovering in all things the reflection of the Creator and seeing in every person his living image” (Evangelium vitae, 83).
On this page, you can browse a listing of lectures that the Pontifical John Paul II Institute has made available as Features for Mars Hill Audio members.
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A recent Bonus Feature
In this September 2025 lecture, L. M. Sacasas evaluates philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s critique of modern life as a “burnout society.” Though many people still experience the exhaustion of life as achievement and performance of the self, Sacasas wonders if we may now be in a post-burnout society better described by nihilism and demoralization. He proposes the concept of idolatry to explain how the god of the self is eating us alive. A Christian response that affirms our creaturely limits as good, that helps us to rest in Christ and find our identity in Him, and that acts with wisdom and strength in the grace God provides, is the only path to true freedom.
The 18 most recent Conversations and Features we’ve released are described here.
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Our most recent Journal
Guests on Volume 167
- NICHOLAS CARR, author of Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, on how social media affects our brains and our relationships
- THOMAS WARD, author of After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher, on Boethius — the Christian — and Stoicism
- JOSEPH STUART, author of Christopher Dawson: A Cultural Mind in the Age of the Great War, on Dawson’s forgotten legacy
- STEVEN KNEPPER & ROBERT WYLLIE, authors of Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction, on key themes in the contemporary philosopher’s work
- EPHRAIM RADNER, author of Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty, on the flawed modern narrative of ‘‘betterment”
- ANDREW WILLARD JONES, author of The Church Against the State: On Subsidiarity and Sovereignty, on reality, friendship, and analogical participation