Beatrice Institute Podcast

“Language and values and concepts come packaged together, don't they?” asks Peter Ramey, recent translator of The Word-Hoard Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Indeed, his opus reflects just this…

The modern debate on gender elucidates some apparent contradictions: Is gender essential, something we know within us? Or is gender a social construct? Is sex real or not? Does Christianity affirm or…

AI 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'…

Health care workers are essential yet underappreciated. Janette Dill, Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy & Management at the University of Minnesota, is researching why. Her work st…

How do we differentiate between Christian action and the action of the Church? Anne Carpenter and the Genealogy and Tradition Reading Group delve into the relationship of the Church and its people in…

“What is history?” is the opening query of Anne Carpenter’s new book, Nothing Gained is Eternal: A Theology of Tradition. Anne’s answer: history is what humans do. The following chapters consider the…

Plato said that craft, or techne, “answers to a genuine human need and solves it.” Does our abstract, postindustrial work fulfill this criteria? Dr. Jeffrey Hanson, Anglican priest and senior philoso…

What enables a being to create? Generative AI appears to approach human capabilities; is it only a matter of time until it surpasses them? Joanna Ng, formerly the head of research and the director of…

The Genealogies of Modernity project is organizing a reading group around Thomas Pfau’s new book, Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image. By way of advertisement, we ar…

Do men need equal opportunity? Dr. Richard Reeves answers with an emphatic “yes.” His work as senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative has en…

For some, Ireland is the archetype of Christianity’s decline in the wake of modern secularization. But is it possible that there is a resurgence of theological and philosophical fervor in this tradit…

Of the many hopes that society hangs on artificial intelligence, one is its potential to clean up the results of human messiness. Whether on a large scale (solving climate change, reducing war crimes…

One of modernity’s many attributes is its ingratitude towards the past. Both through forgetfulness of pre-modern thought and ways of being (whether intentional or accidental), and also by reconfiguri…

Innovation is often seen as key to modern society. Whether in pursuit of economic growth, more convenience in daily life, or simply greater well-being, the pursuit of the new and better ideas and tec…

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Madhavi Nevader and T.J. Lang, both biblical scholars at St. Andrew’s School of Divinity in Scotland. In a conversation that roams from the Tower of Babel to jour…

For much of middle class America, 401ks are seen as good stewardship, and wise investing in the stock market as a way of attaining financial goods for oneself and the economy at large. But do these t…

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the foolishness of those who bow down to the work of their own hands, idols made of wood that cannot speak and have no power of their own. And yet the irony of idolatry i…