Ministry of Ideas
A podcast about the ideas that shape our lives. Hosted by Zachary Davis and produced at Harvard Divinity School. Learn more at ministryofideas.org
Episodes
December 20, 2023 • 46 mins
The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment – the period some historians identify as the beginning of the modern age. American author and philosopher David Foster Wallace worked more than two centuries later, in the “post-modern” style. But these two writers shared a common problem: once modernity fractured society’s sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about ...
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December 13, 2023 • 53 mins
The problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves. According to historian Priya Satia, America’s present epidemic of gun violence has its roots in the industrial revolution. Satia tells the story of British gun-maker Samuel Galton, Jr., who was called to task by his Quaker community for manufacturing rifles. As a professed pacifist, Galton had to wrestle with the large-scale uses to which his weapons were put. So where do we...
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December 6, 2023 • 53 mins
What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to the racial hierarchies that haunt the modern era? Rolena Adornol, David Orique, María Cristina Ríos Espinosa tell the story of how Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican missionary to New Spain, came to racial consciousness in the presence of slavery. His intellectual rebellion spurred ...
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November 29, 2023 • 61 mins
Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – and made visible. Art historian Ilona Katzew tells the story of how Spanish colonists of modern-day Mexico developed theories of blood purity and used the casta paintings – featuring family groups with differing skin pigmentations set in domestic scenes – to represent these theories as ...
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November 22, 2023 • 47 mins
What is the “traditional American family?” Popular images from the colonial and pioneer past suggest an isolated and self-sufficient nuclear family as the center of American identity and the source of American strength. But the idea of early American self-sufficiency is a myth. Caro Pirri tells the story of the precarious Jamestown settlement and how its residents depended on each other and on Indigenous Americans for survival. Ear...
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November 15, 2023 • 47 mins
Genealogy, in Charles Darwin’s terms, is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can guard against the potential dangers of claiming modernity. Against the effort to erase the past, genealogy asserts that our ancestry will always be with us. Against the effort to master the past, genealogy reminds us that our descendants have the freedom to create new futures. Sociologist Al...
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November 13, 2023 • 37 mins
We often think of modernity as a distinct time period in history – one that is said to start at different places, but which always includes us. Yet people have been claiming to be modern since at least the third century BC. Harvard scholar Michael Puett takes us back to ancient China, when a series of emperors laid claim to modernity in order to consolidate their rule. Puett argues that modernity is best understood not as a period ...
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November 9, 2023 • 48 mins
We all know many stories about how modernity came about. But what does it mean to be “modern”? This episode comes at the question through the test case of mountain climbing and rock climbing. Claims to becoming modern through climbing often point back to Italian humanist Francesco Petrarch’s ascent of Mt. Ventoux in 1336, a climb that made him, according to many historians, “the first modern man.” But Petrarch was by no means the f...
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August 2, 2023 • 34 mins
At the dawn of European exploration, the Renaissance polymath Francis Bacon dreamed of resurrecting the Garden of Eden. Driving this vision was a relentless quest to fully understand—and catalog—God's created order.
Guests
Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Ann Blair, Harvard University
Rebecca Bushnell, University of Pennsylvania
Staffan Müller-Wille, University of Cambridge
James Rosindell, Imperial...
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June 22, 2023 • 24 mins
Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach. Some American Jews are showing how religious ritual can help us metabolize catastrophic grief while also pointing towards a future rebirth.
Guests:
-Jennie Rosenn, Founder & CEO of Dayenu
-Andrue Kahn, Central Synagogue
-Malkah Binah Klein, Community leader
This episode was produced by Liya Rechtman.
Zachary Davis is the host of Ministry of ...
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May 16, 2023 • 32 mins
The story of Galileo has long been cited as evidence the Catholic Church is inherently opposed to scientific research. But in fact, astronomy has been built into the history of the Catholic Church – sometimes built literally into the churches themselves.
Guests
Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory
Ann Blair, Harvard Professor of History
John Heilbron, Historian of Science Emeritus, University of Berkeley
Stephen B...
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April 19, 2023 • 29 mins
Scientific origin stories promise to tell us who we really are. But that deepest question of human existence can never fully be answered by science.
Guests
Erika Milam, Princeton University
Cecilia Heyes, Oxford University
This episode was produced by Simon Brown and Maria Devlin McNair.
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March 20, 2023 • 37 mins
A sense of divine destiny drove Americans to expand West. A similar spirit is behind the modern quest to conquer space.
Guests
Lois Rosson, Bergruenn Institute (Los Angeles)
Catherine Newell, University of Miami
Joni Kinsey, University of Iowa
Episode produced by Liya Rechtman.
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March 16, 2023 • 32 mins
God, we know, is outside space and time. But the need to date one faith’s most sacred feast drove a cutting-edge technological quest to accurately locate ourselves in time.
Guests
Simon Brown
Philipp Nothaft
Robert Poole
Producers
Simon Brown
Maria Devlin McNair
Voice Talent
Blair Hodges
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March 15, 2023 • 27 mins
What’s the spiritual significance of quantum mechanics? One answer comes from the Dalai Lama - a surprising but genuine lover of scientific investigation.
Guests
Jose Perillan - Associate Professor of Physics and Science, Technology and Society and the Pauline Newman Director of Science, Technology, and Society at Vassar College
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March 14, 2023 • 18 mins
It’s common to feel that technology removes the magic of the world, but Hindu worshippers in Bangalore have shown that it's all in the approach.
Guest
Tulasi Srinivas, associate professor of anthropology at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Indian Sociological Society. Author of Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism, among other book...
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March 13, 2023 • 26 mins
Do scientists ever reject science? Research data on the controversial topic of extraterrestrial life has met with resistance from some in the scientific community and openness from communities of faith.
Guests
Avi Loeb, professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Harvard University, where he serves as the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science. Author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
Kate Dors...
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March 12, 2023 • 37 mins
Have faith and science always been enemies? The story of Robert Hooke, a revolutionary working in the Scientific Revolution, exemplifies the ways in which Christianity has actually provoked scientific inquiry.
Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
Patricia Fara, director of studies and affiliated lecturer at the Uni...
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March 11, 2023 • 10 mins
Illuminations is a limited series that reveals the untold friendship of religion and science. Through interviews and stories drawn from a range of cultures, faiths, and eras, this series reveals the unknown and unexpected histories of how religion and science have been entangled across time. We hear why the Dalai Lama loves quantum mechanics; why the Mormon faith inspires a search for extraterrestrial life; why the Scientific Revol...
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March 10, 2023 • 3 mins
Illuminations is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that reveals the untold friendship of religion and science. Through interviews and stories drawn from a range of cultures, faiths, and eras, this series reveals the unknown and unexpected histories of how religion and science have been entangled across time.
We hear why the Dalai Lama loves quantum mechanics; why the Mormon faith inspires a search for extraterrestrial life; ...
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