Progress

FROM VOL. 38 Erik Davis describes his research on how humans’ fascination with technology is permeated with “mythic energy” and gnostic aspirations. (11 minutes)

Historians Daniel Walker Howe and George McKenna explain religious understandings of God’s purpose for America in the 19th century and colonial era, respectively. (34 minutes)

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)

John Lukacs asserts that believers in unending technological ‘progress’ can’t really be conservatives.

Peter Harrison on the rise of confidence in scientific progress

FEATURED GUESTS: John Witte, Jr., Hugh Brogan, Daniel Ritchie, Daniel Walker Howe, George McKenna, and Patrick Deneen

FEATURED GUESTS: Jerome Wakefield, Christopher Lane, Dan Blazer, Fred Turner, Barrett Fisher, and Thomas Hibbs

FEATURED GUESTS: Joseph Epstein, John Gray, Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., William T. Pizzi, Pamela Walker Laird, Albert Borgmann, Neal Stephenson, and Alan Jacobs