PREVIEW
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Guests heard on Volume 89
Jerome Wakefield, author of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sadness into Depressive Disorder, on how psychiatry began ignoring causes of mental suffering and so defined sadness as a disease
Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, on the complex characteristics of anxiety and the tendency to treat the absence of ease with drugs
Dan Blazer, author of The Age of Melancholy: “Major Depression” and Its Social Origins, on why psychiatric disorders require attention to the story of patients’ lives
Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, on 1960s dreams of countercultural change and the rise of the Whole Earth Catalog
Barrett Fisher, on the films of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.)
Thomas Hibbs, author of Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption, on the theme of the possibility of redemption in film noir, “neo-noir,” and similar films
Bonus: Jerome Wakefield on the role of drug companies in promoting new assumptions about the nature of mental health, and on the benefits of negative emotions
Related reading and listening
- Cosmetic surgery and human perfectibility — Elizabeth Haiken examines the shift that occurred in 20th century America from a focus on developing character to a focus on developing “personality” and achieving physical perfection. (19 minutes)
- Paradoxical attitudes toward plastic — Jeffrey Meikle traces the technological, economic, and cultural development of plastic and relates it to the American value of authenticity. (15 minutes)
- Self-knowledge versus “selfism” — FROM VOL.10 Psychologist Paul Vitz argues that the modern focus on self-actualization makes the self the highest good in the cosmos. (7 minutes)
- Christianity and psychiatry in a “comfortable rapprochement” — FROM VOL. 38 Dan Blazer examines several factors he believes have led to the end of the necessary and creative tension between Christianity and psychiatry. (11 minutes)
- Technology and the kingdom of God — FROM VOL. 63 Albert Borgmann (1937–2023) believes Christians have an obligation to discuss and discern the kind of world that technology creates and encourages. (12 minutes)
- The recovery of true authority for societal flourishing — Michael Hanby addresses a confusion at the heart of our current cultural crisis: a conflation of the concepts of authority and power. (52 minutes)
- Is American culture now story-less? — From our archives, Michael Kammen compares popular and mass culture, and Philip Fisher analyzes the idea that new cultural forms inevitably dissolve old ones. (26 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
- A fearful darkness in mind, heart, and spirit — Roberta Bayer draws on the work of George Parkin Grant (1918–1988) to argue that our “culture of death” must be countered with an understanding of reality based in love, redemptive suffering, and a recognition of limitations to individual control. (33 minutes)
- Questioning “conservatives” — John Lukacs asserts that believers in unending technological ‘progress’ can’t really be conservatives.
- Nihilism in popular culture — FROM VOL. 44Thomas Hibbs, author of Shows about Nothing, discusses the nihilism that runs through films and television shows in recent American popular culture. (9 minutes)
- Ingmar Bergman and God — Gene D. Phillips, S.J. on the shape of Ingmar Bergman’s religious pondering
- Postmodern manners and morals — Mary P. Nichols on the films of Whit Stillman as comedies of manners
- Movies and terminal irony — Two archive interviews explore how the films of Ingmar Bergman and Whit Stillman sustain a degree of moral depth absent in most movies. (30 minutes)
- Turner, Fred — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Fred Turner is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, where he studies the impact of new media technologies on American culture since World War II.
- Fisher, Barrett — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Dr. Barrett Fisher II is Dean of Academic Programs for the College of Arts and Sciences in Bethel University (St. Paul, Minnesota), where he served as Professor of English and department chair, as well as faculty development coordinator, before moving into full-time administration.
- Psychiatry gone astray — In a 1993 interview, psychiatrist Paul McHugh warns of the dangers of his discipline submitting to cultural captivity. An unedited version of that interview is presented in this Feature. (57 minutes)
- Psychiatric misadventures — FROM VOL. 4 In this segment (from Volume 4 of the Mars Hill Tapes), psychiatrist Paul McHugh talks with Ken Myers about the dangers of trusting psychiatry more than it deserves. (12 minutes)
- Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
- Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)
- Our suffering, and Christ’s — Joel James Shuman and Keith Meador: “The absence of deliverance from sickness or suffering is neither a sign that God has withdrawn favor nor an occasion to abandon hope.”
- Promethean medicine? — Stanley Hauerwas on medicine and limits
- On medicine and the meaning of suffering — Guests Susan Bergman and Christopher Shannon discuss the meaning of suffering and how we might suffer well with Christ. (19 minutes)
- Suffering and the vocation of medicine — Stanley Hauerwas on why the elimination of suffering is an inadequate (and unrealistic) goal for medicine
- Health and personhood — Dr. Kimbell Kornu explains how the training of medical professionals should be shaped by a recognition of a Christian understanding of personhood. (22 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 156 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Kimbell Kornu, Paul Tyson, Mark Noll, David Ney, William C. Hackett, and Marian Schwartz
- Art as aestheticism, love as eroticism, politics as totalitarianism — Augusto Del Noce on the “technological mindset” and the loss of the sense of transcendence
- The consoling hum of technological society — Jacques Ellul on the danger of confusing “technology” with “machines”
- What happens when the Machine stops? — David E. Nye provides a context for evaluating the prospect of life in the Metaverse
- Technological choices become culture — David E. Nye insists that societies do have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established both politically and economically, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
- How should we then die? — Stanley Hauerwas asks how the fear of death shapes the practice of medicine
- “Death lies at the heart of modern medicine” — Dr. Kimbell Kornu, who teaches health care ethics and palliative medicine at St. Louis University, talks about why modern medicine can’t adequately explain health or suffering, even as doctors promote health and try to eliminate suffering. (28 minutes)
- Medicine and the narrative of progress — Jeffrey Bishop explains how modern Western medicine is intertwined with politics and technology within a vision of progress that has an eschatological quality to it. (25 minutes)
- Quarantine’s lessons: patience, hope, the Church, medicine, and more — In the first in a projected series of Features, Stanley Hauerwas shares some thoughts about lessons to be learned while living under quarantine. (13 minutes)
- Shyness: How normal behavior became a sickness — Christopher Lane examines the prejudice in favor of gregariousness which led to the medicalizing of reticence and reserve. Then Ken Myers shares Romano Guardini‘s thoughts about sustaining a centered interiority. (16 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 141 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Grant Wythoff, Susanna Lee, Gerald R. Mcdermott, Carlos Eire, Kelly Kapic, and James Matthew Wilson
- The priority of paying attention — Maggie Jackson talks about the increased relevance of her 2008 book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (15 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 140 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Matthew Rubery, James A. Herrick, Jack Baker, Jeffrey Bilbro, Timothy Gloege, David Hollinger, and Barrett Fisher
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 130 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Jacob Silverman, Carson Holloway, Joseph Atkinson, Greg Peters, Antonio López, and Julian Johnson
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 129 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Nicholas Carr, Robert Pogue Harrison, R. J. Snell, Norman Wirzba, Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski, and Peter Phillips
- Shedding epistemic modesty — Peter Harrison on the rise of confidence in scientific progress
- Fujimura, Hibbs, & Siedell: Abstraction, immanence, & the cultural landscape — Artist, philosopher, and art historian discuss the tension between self-expression, transcendence, and the material world.
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 116 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stratford Caldecott, Fred Bahnson, Eric O. Jacobsen, J. Budziszewski, Brian Brock, and Allen Verhey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 111 — FEATURED GUESTS: Siva Vaidhyanathan, John Fea, Ross Douthat, Ian Ker, Larry Woiwode, and Dana Gioia
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 106 — FEATURED GUESTS: Adam Briggle, John C. Médaille, Christopher Page, Christian Smith, Herman Daly, and Thomas Hibbs
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 105 — FEATURED GUESTS: Julian Young, Perry L. Glanzer, Kendra Creasy Dean, Brian Brock, Nicholas Carr, and Alan Jacobs
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 103 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven D. Smith, David Thomson, Adam McHugh, Glenn C. Arbery, Eric Miller, and Eric Metaxas
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
