Ministry of Ideas

Ministry of Ideas


Latest Episodes

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 8: The Enemy of Morality Is Not Modernity, It’s Me
December 20, 2023

Once modernity fractured societys sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about morality?

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 7: A Genealogy of Gun Violence
December 13, 2023

The problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves.

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 6: A Medieval Anti-Racist
December 06, 2023

What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism?

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5: Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico
November 29, 2023

Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention.

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 4: Jamestown and the Myth of the Sovereign Family
November 22, 2023

What is the traditional American family?

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 3: What Is Genealogy?
November 15, 2023

Against the effort to master the past, genealogy reminds us that our descendants have the freedom to create new futures.

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 2: What Is Modernity?
November 13, 2023

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 leas

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 1: Climbing the Mountains of Modernity
November 09, 2023

We all know many stories about how modernity came about. But what does it mean to be modern?

Illuminations Episode 10: Universal Knowledge
August 02, 2023

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 understandand catalogGod's

Illuminations Episode 9: Rituals for a Dying World
June 22, 2023

Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach.