Modernity

Alison Milbank discusses how both Chesterton and Tolkien restore reason to fantasy and help us to see things as we were meant to see them. (20 minutes)

In his book Returning to Reality, philosopher Paul Tyson imagines a grand “Song of Modernity.” In it, he captures the triumphant sense of enlightenment characteristic of modern thought. Ken Myers summarizes some of the key themes in Tyson’s book. (17 minutes)

Theologian Robert W. Jenson describes how a postmodern world is characterized by the loss of a conviction that we inhabit a “narratable world” that exists coherently outside of ourselves. (40 minutes)

FEATURED GUESTS: Jacob Silverman, Carson Holloway, Joseph Atkinson, Greg Peters, Antonio López, and Julian Johnson

FEATURED GUESTS: Nicholas Carr, Robert Pogue Harrison, R. J. Snell, Norman Wirzba, Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski, and Peter Phillips

David Bentley Hart on the ignorant myth that banishes the transcendent from modern public spaces

R. J. Snell on modernity’s preference for freedom over the good

FEATURED GUESTS: Nicholas M. Healy, Christian Smith, James K. A. Smith, Esther Lightcap Meek, Richard Viladesau, and Jeremy Begbie

FEATURED GUESTS: James Le Fanu, Garret Keizer, Daniel Ritchie, Monica Ganas, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Peter J. Leithart

FEATURED GUESTS: James Davison Hunter, Paul Spears, Steven Loomis, James K. A. Smith, Thomas Long, and William T. Cavanaugh

FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, Stanley Fish, James Peters, Scott Moore, and Makoto Fujimura

FEATURED GUESTS: Stewart Davenport, William T. Cavanaugh, J. Matthew Bonzo, Michael R. Stevens, Craig Gay, Eugene Peterson, and Barry Hankins

Ralph C. Wood discusses the way in which the futuristic dystopia of P. D. James's novel, The Children of Men, reveals much about the West’s modern spiritual confusion and about the possible sources of hope beyond that chaos. (39 minutes)

FEATURED GUESTS: Stephen Gardner, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Wilfred McClay, David Wells, James K. A. Smith, and Robert Littlejohn

FEATURED GUESTS: John Hare, Clifford Putney, Andrei S. Markovits, Wilmer Mills, Steve Bruce, Colleen Carroll, Michael Budde, and Robert Brimlow

FEATURED GUESTS: Jon Butler, Gary Cross, Zygmunt Bauman, Pico Iyer, Richard Stivers, Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, and James Trott