Humanize

In his first term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown famously said back in 1975, “There is no free lunch. This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it. Small is beautiful.” Was Brown right? These days, it seems that establishment thinking and most of the content on mainstream media believes it is so. Threats Read More ›

The environmental movement is growing ever-more extreme. Radical ideas such as granting rights to nature—including geological features like rivers, lakes, and glaciers—are gaining popularity as a means of “saving the planet.” But is there another way? Can we fulfill our human duty to be good stewards of the environment without undermining human exceptionalism and impeding our thriving? According t...

Western Civilization is in crisis. It is becoming unmoored from its Judeo-Christian roots and the belief in the unique dignity of every human life, leading to destructive progressive social policies that some believe threaten us with a form of therapeutic authoritarianism. One such commentator is my guest today on Humanize. Rod Dreher is an American journalist and best-selling author. He Read More...

No modern society has embraced lethal injection euthanasia with the enthusiasm of Canada, where not only the terminally ill can be killed by doctors but also people with chronic conditions and disabilities. Soon, people with mental illnesses will qualify for a doctor-hastened death. In 2021, more than 10,000 Canadians were euthanized by doctors or nurse practitioners. As recently as 2014, Read Mor...

Abraham Lincoln famously called the United States of America, “the last best Hope on earth.”  Throughout our history, most Americans believed that. So did countless people from other countries who left their homes behind to come here in pursuit of the American dream — including my grandmother who immigrated from Italy in 1910 as a 16 year-old to help free Read More ›

A continual criticism of the pro-life movement is that adherents only care about children before they are born. But is that true? The proliferation of Pregnancy Help Centers throughout the country and the many outreach efforts of the pro-life movement to help women and babies after birth testifies to the lie of the accusation. Wesley’s guest today has been immersed Read More ›

In this episode of the Humanize podcast we will explore the human body. Is your body “engineered” or did it evolve through impersonal and random processes over countless millions of years of natural selection? And what difference does the answer to that question make? Wesley’s guests are the authors of Your Designed Body, a new book that explores the complexity Read More ›

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Which seems odd. Usually, a universal external threat unites societies and rallies populations to focus on the common foe. Instead, American society fractured into different tribes, which often coincided with our preexisting political factionalism. Adding to our woes, the proper approach...

In the current episode of Humanize, Wesley interviews Chen Guangcheng, an authentic human rights hero and adamant opponent of Chinese Communist Party tyranny that rules the People’s Republic of China. Known internationally as “the barefoot lawyer,” Chen is a renowned human rights activist who fearlessly advocated for the welfare and rights of women, the disabled, and the poor while in Read More &#...

In a previous episode of Humanize, Wesley interviewed Jennifer Lahl, director of The Detransition Diaries, which documents the stories of three young women who received what is called “gender-affirming care”—including a mastectomy in one case—and later realized that they were indeed the female sex they were born. That discussion focused mostly on the radical body-altering interventions that childr...

We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only a decade ago, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” is becoming a flood. It is one thing when adults decide to radically alter their bodies. But it is quite another to promote these radical Read More ›

Racism is profoundly evil and a clear violation of human exceptionalism by treating inherent equals unequally. Indeed, if we are to become a truly just society, racism must be countered by people of good will whenever it is expressed.  At the same time, slavery is long gone and Jim Crow is dead, never to be mourned. So, the question must Read More ›

In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on the emerging computer technology known as artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of the era of machines? Is AI destined to supplant most human endeavors and activities? Can a computer be deemed a “person” and should it be granted rights as part of the moral community. Will we ever attain immortality Read More ›

With Western society becoming morally polyglot and secular, religious freedom is becoming a major political clash point, and in the United States, a central front in what is sometimes called the culture war. Proponents of robust religious freedom protections see the “free exercise” of religion guaranteed in the Constitution as the “First Liberty.” But others view the same issue as Read More &#8250...

In episode one of the second season of Humanize, Wesley J. Smith’s guest is the internationally famous novelist Dean Koontz. Dean and Wesley discuss how he came to be an author, how life is filled with meaning, his art, the importance of human exceptionalism, the problem with transhumanism, and how Dean uses humor to further his plots and character development. Read More ›

In 1973, nearly 50 years ago, the United States Supreme Court conjured a right to abortion in the Constitution, short-circuiting the democratic debate then ongoing in the states about whether to legalize pregnancy terminations, and if so, under what circumstances. Roe v Wade tore the country apart, launching the pro-life movement into national prominence, resulting in decades of committed democrat...

Homelessness has reached crisis proportions. Few issues of human dignity are as heart wrenching as the wretched scenes in our most prosperous cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle — where one can drive down main thoroughfares and be confronted with tent encampments lining streets that provide scant shelter for thousands of destitute people. The crisis is as Read More ›

In this episode of Humanize, Wesley has a wide-ranging a conversation with his close friend Joseph Bottum, one of our most well read and original thinkers, a true intellectual in the best sense of that term. Their conversation ranges from the new field of cyber-ethics, to poetry, to the importance of cemeteries in maintaining human community, to how the laughter Read More ›

Perhaps no field in society has the naked power, as does bioethics, to impact our individual lives and those of the ones we love. Bioethics focuses on the challenges of mortality, how we care for the ill and vulnerable, and the rights and responsibilities that flow from being a member of the human family. The problem is that there is Read More ›

When Terri Schiavo collapsed with a cardiac arrest in 1990, she could have had no idea that 32 years later people all over the world would know her name and care very much about the manner in which she died. What began as a private family tragedy ultimately exploded into an international cultural conflagration and what was perhaps the most Read More ›

It is no secret that our country is badly divided and riven by profound moral, religious, and political differences about what constitutes the good, the best means of promoting human flourishing, and even the proper meaning of the term, “civil rights.” The question thus becomes: How do we maintain mutual respect and comity, and retain sufficient cohesion to be considered a true society?

The usual canard about the pro-life movement goes something like this: “Pro-lifers care so much about babies before they are born, but not much after. The thing about canards is that, by definition, they are not true. Pro-lifers also work hard to protect the lives of born people—often in coalition with activists and organizations that do not oppose abortion–ranging from Read More ›

The COVID pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Which seems odd. Usually, a universal external threat unite societies and rallies populations to focus on the common foe. Instead, American society fractured into different tribes, which often coincided with our preexisting political factionalism. Adding to our woes, the proper approach to s...

Adoption didn’t used to be a matter of significant controversy. Public and private adoption agencies worked diligently to place children needing families with those who wanted to love them. Private adoptions often happened without a hitch. These days, adoption has been caught up, at least to some degree, in the culture wars surrounding abortion and gay rights. Adoption of children Read More &#8250...

We live in intellectually mediocre times, when commitment to true debate as a means of ascertaining truth — and the understanding that reasonable people can have different opinions — has been replaced by a desire among the culturally powerful to stifle heterodox thought and punish unapproved opinions. Wesley’s guest on this episode of Humanize refuses to yield to such intellectual Read More &#8250...