Beatrice Institute Podcast

"What is history?" is the opening query of Anne Carpenter's new book, Nothing Gained is Eternal: A Theology of Tradition . Anne's answer: history is what humans do. The following chapters consider the consequences of this definition: that tradition must be renewed, not just preserved, and sins, from racism to colonialism, must be dealt with. In this episode, the Genealogy and Tradition reading gro...

Plato said that craft, or techne, "answers to a genuine human need and solves it." Does our abstract, postindustrial work fulfill this criteria? Dr. Jeffrey Hanson, Anglican priest and senior philosopher at Harvard's Human Flourishing Program, has dealt with these questions in his most recent book, Philosophies of Work in the Platonic Tradition: A History of Labor in Human Flourishing.  In this ep...

What enables a being to create? Generative AI appears to approach human capabilities; is it only a matter of time until it surpasses them? Joanna Ng, formerly the head of research and the director of the Center for Advanced Studies at IBM Canada, knows these questions from the inside. Joanna is not only a patented inventor and author, but a leader in the integration of Christianity and technology....

The Genealogies of Modernity project is organizing a reading group around Thomas Pfau's new book, Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image . By way of advertisement, we are re-running this episode with art historian and theorist Matthew Milliner, where he talks about the book and the wider context of image theory. Milliner also recently published a review of Incomprehe...

Do men need equal opportunity? Dr. Richard Reeves answers with an emphatic "yes." His work as senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative has encouraged him to author the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It.  In this conversation, Grant and Dr. Reeves respond to the fact that men are...

The liberal tradition frames the story of modernity as the gradual victory of freedom against state hegemony. Liberty, the consent of the people to be governed, and individual rights are the mainstay of western society. But are we really more free than before? What if freedom isn't what we think?

For some, Ireland is the archetype of Christianity's decline in the wake of modern secularization. But is it possible that there is a resurgence of theological and philosophical fervor in this traditionally Catholic country? Gaven Kerr, a lecturer in philosophy at St. Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, recently hosted a conference called "The Future of Christian Thinking." Gaven...

While we may think of phones and laptops when we hear the word "technology," it can also be thought of as a way of viewing the world: the belief that knowledge of reality means the ability to predict, experiment, and transform it, and that nature is completely open to that process . But while this approach to the world and how we understand it makes us very good at solving problems, it also blinds...

Of the many hopes that society hangs on artificial intelligence, one is its potential to clean up the results of human messiness. Whether on a large scale (solving climate change, reducing war crimes through use of autonomous weapons) or on an individual one (sex robots for isolated people), AI promises to sidestep the problems caused by human limitations.  But in making computers to solve ethical...

One of modernity's many attributes is its ingratitude towards the past. Both through forgetfulness of pre-modern thought and ways of being (whether intentional or accidental), and also by reconfiguring pre-modern narratives to make them palatable to modern minds, a rupture is created between past and present. But what if these reconfigured or "misremembered" discourses in fact embody thoughts and...

Anne Carpenter joins Ryan to discuss the intersection of history, tradition, art, and theology. What is the difference between  ressourcement and genealogy? Are art and theology the same thing? What can video games teach us about theology? How can everyday Christians contribute to renewing the theological tradition? Anne is associate professor of theology at St. Mary's College of California and ha...

Innovation is often seen as key to modern society. Whether in pursuit of economic growth, more convenience in daily life, or simply greater well-being, the pursuit of the new and better ideas and technology is always underway. But what if the key to human flourishing doesn't lie in the search for the new, but rather in maintenance of what we already have? Could the endless pursuit of innovation as...

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Madhavi Nevader and T.J. Lang, both biblical scholars at St. Andrew's School of Divinity in Scotland. In a conversation that roams from the Tower of Babel to journey of the apostle Paul to the third heaven, they discuss how the understanding of God's identity—as Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible, as Jesus the divine man, as multiple Persons who are yet one — has unfol...

For much of middle class America, 401ks are seen as good stewardship, and wise investing in the stock market as a way of attaining financial goods for oneself and the economy at large. But do these things we take for granted contribute to the overall good of the human person and society?  Jacob Imam, economist and executive director of New Polity, argues that not only are these things not necessar...

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the foolishness of those who bow down to the work of their own hands, idols made of wood that cannot speak and have no power of their own. And yet the irony of idolatry is that idols come to have a strange power over us and our actions. John Wyatt of the Faraday Institute sees this biblical image of the idol as a powerful lens for assessing the spiritual, ethical, and...

Ryan, Grant, and Gretchen ask each other all their burning questions, probing more deeply into past interviews and breaking new territory. Together they ponder how Jesus might run a tech company, the desire to live forever and its impact on procreation, and what it means to be stewards of reality.

The liberal tradition frames the story of modernity as the gradual victory of freedom against state hegemony. Liberty, the consent of the people to be governed, and individual rights are the mainstay of western society. But are we really more free than before? What if freedom isn't what we think? Historian and theologian Andrew Willard Jones talks with Grant about the ways that liberalism contradi...

The modern conception of how time unfolds leaves us trapped in a chronological sequence with no return to the past; but is it true that "you can't go back"? In the second part of their conversation, Matthew and Ryan discuss how the past can erupt into the present; why cultivating these temporal possibilities must be an ecumenical project; the way images reveal timeless truths that underlie our vis...

We often think of the time before the birth of Jesus Christ in terms of the Old Testament. But what about the humans in other parts of the world, long before the history of Israel begins? Art historian Matthew Milliner joins Ryan to discuss how "the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world" might have been present in cultures tens of thousands of years ago. The first of two parts.

Although the intersection of faith and artificial intelligence is a modern topic, it can be seen as a new version of an old question famously posed by Tertullian: what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Today's podcast guest, Derek Schuurman—computer scientist, author, and professor at Calvin University—rephrases that question for those living in the age of AI: what does Silicon Valley have to...

Healthcare workers have been lauded as heroes during the pandemic; but even as nurses and other medical employees have been praised for their service, COVID-19 has exposed many of them to long hours, dangerous working conditions, and lack of resources. Although COVID may have magnified these problems in an unprecedented way, they are hardly new challenges for laborers in the healthcare industry. I...

In this episode, Ryan interviews historian Brad Gregory, Henkels Family College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. In his book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society , Brad connects the Reformation in surprising and sometimes controversial ways to the making of the modern world, from secularization and the privatization of religion to the batt...

As technology develops at an ever more rapid pace, it can seem that ethics struggles to keep up with it. While science and technology advance by building on discoveries of the past, virtue and moral knowledge must be cultivated afresh in every individual and each generation. This is where Brian Green comes in. As director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, his areas of...

On this episode of the podcast, Grant interviews Ted Castronova, Professor of Media at Indiana University and author Life is a Game: What Game Design Says about the Human Condition.  Mathematical game theory defines a game as anything that has players making strategic choices to achieve an outcome that matters to them. From this, Ted argues that life itself is a game, and as Christians we can view...

In her book The Permeable Self, Barbara Newman—John Evans Professor of Latin, as well as English, Classics, and History at Northwestern University—explores the importance of coinherence in the medieval view of personhood. This is the concept that persons are profoundly interconnected, existing not in isolation but "in" each other. One illustration of this is the trope of exchanging hearts, whether...