Economics

FROM VOL. 147 Mary Hirschfeld argues that modern economics makes some fundamental assumptions about personhood, material goods, and God that prevent the development of a truly human understanding of economic life. (20 minutes)

Historian Jackson Lears explains how gambling springs from a longing for an experience of “unbidden beneficence,” a repudiation of the idea of control that marks modernity. (49 minutes)

We present an interview from our archives with theologian William Cavanaugh, in which he examines the free market, consumerism, globalization, and scarcity, all parsed within an unabashedly theological framework. (37 minutes)

Two interview from 2010: John C. Médaille summarizes how distributist economics differs from both capitalism and socialism. Then Herman Daly discusses the danger of economic theory abstracted from the actual stuff of Creation. (44 minutes)

Joseph Pearce on the key insight of E. F. Schumacher

Daniel Bell on the hedonistic logic of the “new capitalism”

Allan C. Carlson discusses an anthology of articles from Free America, a magazine published between 1937 and 1947 whose writers believed that political democracy could only survive if coupled with decentralized economic democracy. (26 minutes)

FEATURED GUESTS: R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway

Brad Littlejohn reflects on how best to ask and answer some of the questions raised by our current disease-ravaged circumstances, particularly questions related to Christian freedom and love of neighbor. (29 minutes)

In anticipation of this Fall’s Areopagus Lecture entitled “‘For Freedom Set Free’: Retrieving Genuine Religious Liberty,” we present selections from interviews with three MARS HILL AUDIO guests who have raised questions about the modern understanding of freedom. (27 minutes)

FEATURED GUESTS: Chris Armstrong, Grevel Lindop, Michael Martin, William T. Cavanaugh, Philip Turner, and Gisela Kreglinger

David L. Schindler on Adam Smith’s big mistake

FEATURED GUESTS: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Andrew Davison, Adrian Pabst, Gary Colledge, Linda Lewis, and Thomas Bergler

FEATURED GUESTS: Adam Briggle, John C. Médaille, Christopher Page, Christian Smith, Herman Daly, and Thomas Hibbs

FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs

FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs

Mark Mitchell: “The ideology of economics is a way of seeing the world. It forces reality into a preconceived structure and subsequently deigns to rule this truncated world with all the authority of science.”

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

Wendell Berry explains how the modern Western ideal of the sovereign self enshrines a story of the abandonment of restrictions and restraints in the name of human freedom.

FEATURED GUESTS: Peter Augustine Lawler, David Koyzis, Roger Lundin, Craig Gay, Steven Rhoads, and R. Larry Todd