PREVIEW
Guests heard on Volume 78
Mark Bauerlein, author of the essay “A Very Long Disengagement,” published in the January 6, 2006, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, on the causes of disengagement of college students from concern for intellectual and civic life
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, author of the essay “A Stranger’s Dream: The Virtual Self and the Socialization Crisis,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past, on television, children, and acquiring a sense of reality
Sam Van Eman, author of On Earth As It Is in Advertising? Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope, on the view of the good life advanced by advertising
Thomas de Zengotita, author of Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, on postmodern individualism and “reality” TV
Eugene McCarraher, author of the essay “Me, Myself, and Inc.: ‘Social Selfhood,’ Corporate Humanism, and Religious Longing in American Management Theory 1908-1956,” published in the anthology Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Person in the American Past on how American management theory became an influential source of religious meaning and practice
John Witte, Jr., co-editor (with Frank S. Alexander) of a two-volume collection, titled The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, on how law embodies a view of human nature, and why religious viewpoints have often been ignored
Bonus: Thomas de Zengotita discusses the defining characteristics of contemporary culture and why he offers no solutions to the problems of the moment
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