Socrates in the City

In this episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, Harrington is joined by author and professor Spencer Klavan to explore the enduring conversation between Athens and Jerusalem, asking what Plato might have to do with Tertullian, and why it still matters. Drawing on the great books and the tension between the life of the mind and the life of the world, they unpack the five central crises of modernity: reality, the body, meaning, religion, and regimes.

Offering an exclusive preview of Klavan’s forthcoming book, the discussion turns to the power of language as the meeting point be...

Why do most revolutions collapse into chaos, tyranny, or bloodshed, while the American Revolution produced one of the most enduring republics in history? In this episode of The Revolution, Socrates in the City’s newest program, host Eric Metaxas is joined by American author and legal scholar, Jonathan Turley to discuss his book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. They use Thomas Paine’s journey as the lens through which to explore that question. A man who stood at the center of both the American and French Revolutions, Paine embodied the brilliance and danger of r...

In this Socrates in the Studio conversation, host Eric Metaxas is joined by author and editor of The Epoch Times, Jan Jekielek, to discuss his new book, Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary, which explores the disturbing realities behind one of the world’s most controversial transplant systems.

This conversation discusses the hidden costs of life-saving organ replacement surgeries, exploring the dark truth of forced organ harvesting tied to political repression, corruption, and state power in modern China. Moving through the intersections of history, ideology, and author...

In this profound and deeply personal episode of Socrates in the Studio, Eric Metaxas sits down with renowned philosopher, professor, and bestselling author Peter Kreeft to wrestle with one of humanity’s oldest and most difficult questions: How can a good God allow suffering?

Blending philosophical depth with wisdom born from lived experience, Dr. Kreeft offers a thoughtful and compassionate exploration of pain, loss, love, and the mystery of human suffering through the lens of faith. Drawing from sources as varied as The Chronicles of Narnia, the biblical story of Book of Job, and the life and su...

In this episode of Socrates Dialogues, Mary Harrington is joined by author Freya India for a candid and culturally incisive conversation on the growing commodification of women in the digital age. They trace how social media, pop culture, and influencer platforms, from Call Her Daddy to Cardi B, have reshaped the expectations placed on young women. At the center is the rise of the “Instagram face,” a curated, hyper-perfected ideal that blurs individuality and encourages constant self-surveillance. This conversation explores what it means to internalize an ever-present gaze and questions the modern mental health industry’s role, suggesting future genera...

In this Socrates in the Studio conversation, host Eric Metaxas is joined by author and professor Carl Trueman to discuss his newest book “The Desecration of Man” exploring the modern crisis of meaning through the lenses of philosophy, theology, art, and culture—tracing humanity’s journey from enchantment to disenchantment, from sacred order to nihilism.

Drawing on figures like Thomas Aquinas and the great philosophers of the Western tradition, they examine how religious symbolism, artistic expression, and moral imagination once shaped a vision of what it meant to be human—and how that vision has eroded in the wake o...

In this Socrates in the City conversation, Eric Metaxas is joined by Margarita Mooney Clayton, author and founder of the Scala Foundation, to discuss her new book “When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God.” In our current day, more and more people are looking to Mary as a spiritual mother and guide. Throughout this conversation, Mooney Clayton shares the enduring and often miraculous influence of Mary in times of danger, loss, and spiritual renewal.

Bridging theological differences across Christian traditions, their conversation considers Mary’s mysterious yet deeply personal role, not only as the second...

In this episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, novelist Lionel Shriver joins Harrington for a wide-ranging and incisive conversation on her novel A Better Life and the deeper cultural longings it exposes. Together, they probe the enduring myth of “a better life” and how it shapes modern views on immigration in both the United States and the United Kingdom. They also dive into the fertility crisis, shifting expectations around modern masculinity, and broader social currents redefining family, identity, and belonging in the West. Thought-provoking and unflinching, this dialogue explores what we mean when we seek a better life, and...

In this episode of Socrates in the Studio, Eric Metaxas sits down with author and longtime friend Peter Giersch to explore his striking new book “Talking of Michelangelo: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Burgundy Region.” What begins as a journey through the quiet beauty of Burgundy unfolds into something far more profound: a meditation on mortality, meaning, and the soul’s ultimate destination. Part memoir and part travelogue, Giersch recounts a pivotal week spent on an Ignatian retreat—a week that became a turning point in his life of faith. Together, he and Metaxas wrestle with enduring question...

In this Socrates Dialogues conversation with Mary Harrington, James Orr joins her as he traces his journey from the life of the mind to the heart of public affairs, reflecting on how a scholar becomes a political advisor without abandoning the pursuit of truth. Through this conversation, James Orr explores the meaning of scholasticism and its enduring influence, the shaping power of philosophy on the intellectual life of Europe, and the lasting political visions of Aristotle and Plato as they echo into modernity. Moving between the ancient and the contemporary, the abstract and the practical, the discussion wrestles with...

How has the West drifted from its grounding in God, and what has been lost along the way? In this Socrates in the Studio conversation, author and scholar Mary Eberstadt joins Eric Metaxas to examine one of the most pressing cultural and spiritual questions of our time.

Drawing on her influential works, including Adam and Eve After the Pill, How the West Lost God, and others, Eberstadt unpacks the far-reaching consequences of the sexual revolution, particularly its impact on relationships between men and women and on the broader redefinition of intimacy, identity, and family. She challenges prevailing...

“The idea of there being human rights is as fantastical as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day…”

In this spirited dialogue, host Mary Harrington is joined by historian and bestselling author Tom Holland to explore why Rome’s long shadow still falls across the modern imagination, and why Americans are particularly drawn to learning about this great empire. Drawing from Holland’s latest book, Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age, the two discuss the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind. The conversation also ranges...

What is behind society’s obsession with monkeys? In this thought-provoking conversation, Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with author and playwright Jonathan Leaf to explore the ideas behind his provocative new book, The Primate Myth, and to ask what lies beneath the persistent effort to connect humanity and primates. They discuss why this fascination has endured so powerfully across culture, science, and media.

From the mass popularity of Punch the Monkey to a broader cast of famous animals that have captured the public imagination, they examine the historical, cultural, and even political forces sh...

Mary Harrington is joined by Louise Perry to discuss many topics ranging from the sexual revolution to the collapsing birth rates around the world to the strange pressures of feeling the need to react to each week’s “deranged mass emotional moment.” They argue that stepping offline—and building families and thinking deeply, for example—may actually be the ultimate countercultural move in an age addicted to speed and outrage.

The post Louise Perry and Mary Harrington: The Feminization of Society first appeared on Socrates in the City.

How does the book of Genesis line up with modern science? In this Socrates in the City conversation, Eric Metaxas is joined by astrophysicist Hugh Ross as they explore the surprising truths found in the Bible. The two explore the multitude of ways Genesis gets the science right, but still challenges us, from the origins of the universe to the reality of the Ice Age, along with a personal story about Ross’s Gideon Bible that’s been carried for years. This conversation explores the nuances, mysteries, and surprising truths of the relationship between science and faith.

The...

Episode three of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington returns, this week with artist Jonathan Pageau, for a conversation that is as delightful as it is wide-ranging. From medieval cosmology to internet memes (we love how Mary describes them as “clusters of meaning”), from Dante to C.S. Lewis, we wonder if there’s a topic that wasn’t covered. The duo discuss how one of the modern world’s troubles lies in forgetting how to see, having traded a symbolic vision of reality for a mechanistic one that leaves the soul rather undernourished.

Along the way, there are conver...

In this episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, she is joined by philosopher and writer Nina Power, who examines the changing philosophies of education and academic life, questioning the sustainability of what she describes as the “Ponzi scheme” of woke institutional culture. She reflects on the value of intellectual freedom, the dignity of varied vocations, and the necessity of a society that honors different paths, priorities, and forms of excellence beyond the narrow confines of elite academia.

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What are the stories that make up your life? In our newest Socrates in the Studio episode, Socrates in the City founder and host Eric Metaxas sits down with writer, poet, and mythographer Martin Shaw for a conversation that is as searching as it is spellbinding. Shaw’s latest book, Liturgies of the Wild, traces the astonishing and often unbelievable tales that have marked his own journey—from a 101-day immersion in oral storytelling to his unexpected homecoming in the Orthodox Church. Together, Eric and Martin explore the sacred threads that run through storytelling and the way ancient tales cont...

In this premiere episode of Socrates Dialogues with Mary Harrington, author and broadcaster Justin Brierley joins her to explore the shifting terrain of the New Atheist movement and the surprising cracks forming in its once-confident certainties. Drawing on years of conversations and cultural observation, Brierley examines what he calls a “quiet revival”—a renewed openness to faith, meaning, and transcendence emerging beneath the surface of our secular age.

The post Mary Harrington and Justin Brierley: The Quiet Revival of Christianity first appeared on Socrates in the City.

What gets to be called art—and who decides? In this wide-ranging Socrates Dialogues conversation, New York-based thinkers, writers, and art admirers Heather Mac Donald and Roger Kimball explore the definition of art and the history of the unmaking of beauty in modern contemporary art. Drawing on examples from Duchamp, Warhol, Serrano, Hirst, and others, the two discuss how the banal, the transgressive, and the political have reshaped the aesthetic experience of art, often robbing it of spiritual resonance.

This episode of Socrates in the City is brought to you by Cornerstone University. Cornerstone University students are no...

What does it mean to speak the truth in an age hostile to the Truth? And why is it that those who dare to do so — whether Socrates, Jesus Himself, or our own contemporary, Charlie Kirk — find themselves at odds with the powers that be? In this Socrates in the Studio conversation, professor of philosophy Peter Kreeft joins host Eric Metaxas to reflect on the cost of truth-telling. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Kreeft shares his own remarkable journey from Calvinist to Catholic, gives insights into why a good God allows suffering, and reminds us that history tells the story of m...

What is the history of Stoicism and how does one practice it today?

Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with professor and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, author of the popular How to be a Stoic and Beyond Stoicism, to discuss the history and development of Stoicism, and the line between emotion, reason, and virtue. They discuss the influence of stoicism in pop culture, from ancient Greek icons to modern-day Star Trek. Throughout Pigliucci’s work, he highlights the balance of skepticism and trust as a road to wisdom, as exemplified by Socrates himself.

The post...

Is there an unnamed force ― which we all feel ― reshaping what it means to be human? Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas is joined by the furiously gifted writer, Paul Kingsnorth, to discuss his newest book, Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. Throughout the compelling ― and at times chilling ― discussion, Kingsnorth asks if society is unmaking humanity by replacing a Christian worldview with technical progress, creating a type of technological tower of Babel. The two discuss advances in AI, humanity’s bent to create God from the Garden of Eden, Frankenstein, transhumanism, and Kingsnorth’s hope for the futu...

“Evil labors with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

What does it mean to cling to truth, beauty, and goodness in the shadow of history’s darkest hours? Can goodness truly spring forth from evil?

These questions lie at the heart of this Socrates in the City conversation with historian Joseph Loconte. The discussion focuses on J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, two literary giants who wrote their masterpieces in the aftermath of World War II. In his latest...

What is happiness? Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with Dr. Arthur Brooks to discuss one of the most prevalent questions in our society: What is happiness? The question behind his newest book, The Happiness Files. Based on his long career and his lived experience as a Professor and scholar, Dr. Brooks shares not only what happiness is, but the deeper questions of love, loss, and meaning. Throughout this conversation, they explore the scientific theories of happiness, what challenges we face in modern society to achieving it, and Dr. Brook’s signature game for his students, “What i...

Can we prove the existence of God? In this Socrates in the City conversation, host Eric Metaxas speaks with William Lane Craig—Emeritus Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, renowned Christian apologist, and one of today’s most influential philosophers. Drawing from his new book, Systematic Philosophical Theology, and more than four decades of experience and research, Craig examines some of the most pressing questions at the crossroads of Christian doctrine and contemporary analytic philosophy. Together, they explore Dr. Craig’s long history of leading apologetic studies, the historical roots of Adam and Eve, the role of Nea...

Is there an innate human knowledge of Truth? Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with Robert P. George, Princeton University Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, to discuss his new book, Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. Their conversation delves into the nature of humanity, examining how our understanding of it influences our perception of truth, and the interplay between biblical perspectives, classical traditions, and modern philosophies. From moral contrasts to reflections on great philosophers, they examine belief, feeling, and the shared foundations of truth.

The post Robert P. George: We...

How did Socialism become mainstream in New York City? In this timely and insightful conversation, Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas speaks with NYC-based journalist Olivia Reingold about her coverage of the 2026 NYC Mayoral race’s front runner, Zohran Mamdani. Reingold unpacks the shifting tide in the political and economic thought of Gen Z, how Mamdani’s campaign—run almost entirely online—may become a blueprint for future digital-first political movements, and what a socialist mayor could signal for America’s political future.

The post Olivia Reingold: What Political Polarization Means for America first appeared on Socrates i...

What are the Jewish and Christian foundations of Western society—and why do they matter today? In this insightful conversation, Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas speaks with journalist and author Melanie Phillips about her newest book, The Builder’s Stone. Phillips explores Jewish identity, the history of Israel, and the spiritual roots that have shaped our culture. She also reflects on her career in journalism, the cost of truth-telling, and the common misconceptions that cloud our understanding of faith, history, and identity.

The post Melanie Phillips: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only T...

What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Are these simply historical documents, or could they reflect something divinely inspired? In this conversation, Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn to explore the spiritual architecture of America’s founding in his book, The Founder’s Key. Drawing from his deep scholarship, Dr. Arnn illuminates how the bold creativity behind the American experiment was rooted in timeless truths—and how its carefully crafted separation of powers reflects both human humility and a reverence for divine order.

The...

Is there an ethical way to approach the boundaries and limitations of humanity? William Hurlbut is a Senior Research Scholar in the Dept. of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and an Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center as well as an expert on the intersection of theology and science. He joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas, to discuss the dangers of genetic engineering, embryonic testing, and both the international and ethical complications of it all. Through this insightful conversation, Hurlbut shares the new developments in transhumanism and explores the boundaries of humanity.<...

Do all roads lead to Rome? And do all paths lead to faith? Ross Douthat, a New York Times Opinion columnist joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas to discuss his new book, Believe, and share his case for why a renewed religious society aligns better with scientific data, history, and our desires for something beyond ourselves. Through his book, Douthat shares the popular arguments against religion, the relationship between faith and science, and how his own personal experience of faith has shifted and grown over time. 

The post Ross Douthat: Why Everyone Should Be Religious f...

Has toxic empathy led modern Christians to live in a Stockholm Syndrome-like way towards an opposing world? John West, Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where he also serves as Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, shares how the overwhelming influence of toxic empathy and desire to appease popular culture can be fatal to our faith. Using the famous Stockholm bank robbery of the 1970, West joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas, to discuss how Christians have subconsciously grown up in cultural captivity, and how we can rebel against it.

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What do Woody Allen, Dostoevsky, and Cain and Able have in common? What are the underlying psychological themes and influences in modern horror? Andrew Klavan, an award-winning writer, screenwriter, and media commentator joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas to discuss his new book, The Kingdom of Cain. Klavan explores how artists’ imaginative engagement with the darkness can point the way to living beautifully in the midst of a tragic world. Using the frame of three historic murders, he examines how the transformation that occurs in art grants us a vision for how transformation can take root in ou...

Is the West in decline? Dr. James Lindsay is the author of books like Cynical Theories, The Marxification of Education, and most recently, The Queering of the American Child. He joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas to discuss his experiences in uncovering the hypocrisy of academic journals and the critical theory, cultural and academic marxism, and other hidden agendas these publications endorse. They explore how these trends are impacting academia in the West and beyond.

The post James Lindsey: Exposing the Insanity of Modern Academia first appeared on Socrates in the City.

Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists to name a few. A leading scholar in the field of neurology he has published original research on neuroimaging in schizophrenia, the phenomenology of schizophrenia, and is the author of, The Master and his Emissary:The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas to discuss the myths and misconceptions between the left and right hemispheres of our brain. McGilchrist highlights...

Headmaster of Michaela school, Katherine Birbalsingh sits down with host Eric Metaxas to discuss the challenges of speaking about the deficiencies in the UK school system and how it led her to begin her school and initiate a reform of Classical Education against the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’.       

The post Katherine Birbalsingh: Is Classical Education the Key to Reviving the West? first appeared on Socrates in the City.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What does the world of philosophy have to do with the world of religion? Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity, Dr. James Orr joins host Eric Metaxas to have a conversation on the Twilight of the West, the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and the enduring influence of Hellenistic and Hebraic thought in our enlightened world.

The post James Orr: Maintaining Orthodoxy in an Evolving West first appeared on Socrates in the City.

Is the West inherently bad? Konstantin Kisin, Writer, social commentator, co-host of TRIGGERnometry and comedian, sits down with Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas to discuss how the rise of ‘woke culture’ undermines the multifaceted history of the West. They explore the limits of free speech, the balance between fear and change, and the relationship of shame and truth.

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Host Eric Metaxas welcomes lawyer, activist, and Independent Presidential candidate Mr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the Socrates in the City stage with a standing ovation for a conversation on America. In keeping with the forum’s history, Mr. Metaxas asks Mr. Kennedy the big questions, questions on “life, God, and other small topics”. Conversation topics are wide-ranging and include everything from government corruption to drug addiction to RFK Jr.’s faith in God to the murder of his uncle and father, and include references to cultural figures such as Upton Sinclair, Carl Jung, Albert Camus, and… Anthony Fauci. The duo ev...