Socrates in the City

James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge and political advisor, traces his path from scholastic metaphysics to public life. He explores scholasticism and Aristotle’s political visions. The conversation contrasts essence vs modern constructivism and connects Aristotelian thought to debates about nation, family, and contemporary policy.

Mary Eberstadt, author and scholar of faith, culture, and family, explores consequences of the sexual revolution. She discusses contraception’s ripple effects on marriage, fatherlessness, and secularization. Short takes cover cultural narratives that erode intimacy, commercial profiteering from gender discord, and a case for reclaiming marriage, sacrifice, and community as antidotes.

Tom Holland, historian and bestselling author of Pax, joins Mary Harrington; Holland is known for books on ancient and medieval history. They roam from Rome’s imperial power and the Pax Romana to why Americans idolize Roman models. Conversations touch on citizenship, Christianity as imperial glue, Persia’s influence, medieval institutions, and how media revolutions shape revolts and memory.

Jonathan Leaf, playwright and author of The Primate Myth, challenges the popular link between humans and apes. He traces cultural and scientific reasons for the chimp fascination. Short, punchy segments tackle media myths, violent chimp behavior, flaws in genetic comparisons, and why cooperation, language, and domestication set humans apart.

Louise Perry, journalist and author known for The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, discusses feminism, collapsing birth rates, and the pressures of online outrage. They explore how stepping offline, building families, and digital self‑control have become countercultural status signals. Conversations range from the rise and shift of fourth‑wave feminism to fertility trends and cultural reactions to modernity.

Hugh Ross, astrophysicist and author who links cosmology and Scripture, joins to explore how Genesis aligns with modern science. They discuss the scientific order of Genesis, dating events like the Flood and Babel, ice-age links, ark logistics, fine-tuning and the rarity of extraterrestrial life, UAP phenomena, and human origins versus hominid fossils.

Jonathan Pageau, an icon carver and commentator on symbolism and medieval cosmology, joins Mary Harrington for a wide-ranging conversation. They explore medieval cosmology versus modern mechanistic vision. They trace memes, gargoyles, and apotropaic symbols as contemporary symbolic forces. They discuss narrative, cultural fragmentation, and how a shared orientation toward the transcendent might restore meaning.

Nina Power, philosopher and writer critiquing contemporary higher education, explores why universities feel like a debt-driven Ponzi scheme. She questions identity politics, free speech limits, and gender theory. Short-term fixes, vocational revival, community ties, and the future of work and meaning are debated in lively, provocative conversation.

Martin Shaw, writer, poet, and mythographer who explores folklore and religious imagination. He recounts living outdoors to learn oral storytelling, a 101-day vigil that reshaped his practice, and a luminous vision that led him into Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The conversation traces how ancient tales and ritual shape presence, formation, and a sense of the One True Myth.

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.