Nadya Williams and Katelyn Walls Shelton discuss Aldous Huxley's Brave New World — its haunting parallels to embryo selection, reproductive biotechnology, and pleasure-maximizing culture — and what Christians should make of a novel that reads less like dystopian fiction and more like this morning's news.
-
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for a full-tuition scholarship for Beeson Divinity School's M.Div program that begins Fall 2026 here: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord
-
Chapters
- 00:00 — Introduction & what makes a classic
- 05:00 — Brave New World mirrors our world: embryo selection, Orchid, Gattaca
- 07:16 — Why Christians in America should read this book
- 14:19 — Plot overview: hatcheries, Bernard, Lenina, John the Savage
- 23:40 — Life in the World State: conditioning, sexuality, soma, death
- 35:40 — Huxley's own contradictions: Doors of Perception and his LSD death
- 39:17 — Current reproductive biotechnologies: embryo grading, gene editing, artificial wombs
- 49:43 — Closing: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin