Can AI Reignite Our Faith? With Shanen Boettcher
Release Date: 04/28/2023
Unmachining: Reclaiming a Grounded Life
Beatrice Institute Podcast
Increasingly, technology is dominating our lives. How do we stay human in the midst of digital upheaval? What lessons can we glean from dystopian literature? Is there a heuristic we can adopt that helps us to discern which technology to use and which to reject? Can only a deistic story compete with the Machine story or are there secular alternatives? Peco and Ruth Gaskovski have been exploring these timely questions from a hopeful, practical perspective on their Substacks Pilgrims in the Machine and School of the Unconformed. Join Grant, Peco, and Ruth as they explore these and...
info_outline
Exploring “Off-Liberalism” with Fred Bauer
Beatrice Institute Podcast
Liberalism is often taken to be essentially about the promotion of radical individual autonomy, but might this understanding of liberalism be only one kind of liberalism? And, if so, why does that matter? In this episode, Weston and Fred discuss the meaning of "off-liberalism," an understanding of liberalism that highlights how disparate historical, cultural, and philosophical sources contribute to what is often labeled as "liberal" today, complicating the idea that liberalism is essentially about maximizing personal autonomy. Weston and Fred discuss the practical stakes of...
info_outline
"Relearning How to Read" with Kathryn Mogk Wagner
Beatrice Institute Podcast
Does it take a trained expert to read books in our own language? The heart of English departments around the world is the love of amateurs, yet that heart seems to be gradually shrinking, replaced more and more with cold technical literary analysis. Kathryn Mogk Wagner identifies this as the reason English Departments themselves are shrinking too. Literary analysis is shutting out truth and reading for edification, turning instead to niche readings and unique techniques. Can a culture raised on suspicion re-learn how to read the great texts for truth not tetrameter? Is there a balance...
info_outline
Why Does Beauty Wound? with John-Paul Heil
Beatrice Institute Podcast
You are marveling at a beautiful sunset, standing in awe before an Italian masterpiece, or gazing lovingly into the face of your beloved. These moments of beauty, however brief, impact our hearts, minds, and souls in a profound way. What exactly is occurring in these moments? John-Paul Heil offers insight through a reading and discussion of his essay “Ekstasis and the Chicken Truck,” in which he offers insight into the nature of these experiences we all share, which are yet so individual to each of us. Heil explains the importance of attentiveness, offers a critique of Petrarch, and...
info_outline
Can We Rebuild the American Trades?
Beatrice Institute Podcast
What has become of the trades within our country? Where did the blue-collar workers go and what is the reason behind their disappearance? Is there anything we can do to rebuild and re-vitalize this crucial section of today’s society? A co-founder of the College of St. Joseph, the Worker, Jacob Imam helps to answer our questions. Join Grant and Jacob as they discuss the root of America’s trade epidemic and discuss the new college of St. Joseph, the Worker. This new school based in Steubenville, Ohio is quickly becoming the paradigm of trade education, combining a traditional liberal arts...
info_outline
Where Do Bioethics Begin? with Michael Deem
Beatrice Institute Podcast
As a bioethicist and Catholic deacon-in-training, Dr. Michael Deem has spent years in the medical trenches as well as in theological and philosophical research. Michael Deem joins Grant in this episode to answer questions such as, “Do bioethicists actually change minds?” “Does healthcare flourish under a provider-of-services model?” and “Are bioethical principles self-evident?” Their discussion covers territory from contraception to logic to the style of recent Catholic popes.
info_outline
Is Mutualism Possible? with Sara Horowitz
Beatrice Institute Podcast
How can we help locally, but in a way that works economically? This is the challenge that thwarts many solidaristic startups. Luckily, Sara Horowitz has picked up the gauntlet. Sara Horowitz has been both the chair of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the founder of the Freelancers Union and the Freelancers Insurance Company and talks eloquently on mutualism. Join Grant and Sara’s discussion on mutualism, in which they expound on friendly societies and the history of mutual aid societies and ask the questions: What should be the current strategy of protecting laborers?...
info_outline
How Are Numbers Beautiful? with Francis Su
Beatrice Institute Podcast
How is mathematics a liberal art? How can being good at math translate into virtue? Dr. Francis Su, the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, is well aware of mathematics’ place in human flourishing. In this episode, he and Grant converse over these questions. They also discuss the reverence evoked by math and the transcendence found in it, the effectiveness of mathematical assessments, and popular mathematical literature.
info_outline
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 3: What Is Genealogy?
Beatrice Institute Podcast
Modernity strives to break with the past, especially genealogy. However, is it possible for a society to break a genealogical thread? In this episode, we explore the meaning and value of genealogy, a way of thinking that will shape the rest of this series. We ask how different forms of genealogical thinking can reconnect us to the past without limiting our future to the past. We see how critical genealogy does the important work of challenging both of those kinds of modernity claim that purport to leave the past behind, and noble origin stories which claim a purely virtuous inheritance from...
info_outline
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 2: What Is Modernity? with Michael Puett
Beatrice Institute Podcast
We often think of modernity as a time period in history. But people have been claiming to be modern since at least c. 550 AD, when the Roman writer Cassiodorus used the term modernus to mark off everything that had happened since the fall of the Roman Empire. Harvard scholar Michael Puett takes us back much further, to the third century BC in ancient China, when a series of emperors claimed modernity to consolidate their rule. Puett argues that modernity is best understood as a claim to freedom from the past. By recognizing two forms of modernity claim—one that tries to erase the...
info_outlineAI gives us information. It furnishes facts. It prompts us with news headlines. But could AI also answer our religious questions?
When Shanen Boettcher paused his tech career and completed a master's degree in world religions, he began to ask himself this question. Recently, he conducted a study to put it to the test. In this episode, Shanen and Gretchen discuss his findings and explore the previously widely-ignored intersection of technology and faith. They ask: Do people feel they have more privacy speaking about spirituality with AI? What kind of authority do AI-generated answers evoke? How will the religious realm, a realm of mystery and prayer, be incorporated into the factual, statistical world of technology?