Explore every episode of the podcast Humanize

The United States is in a cultural crisis. Our young are experiencing unprecedented levels of mental illness. Family structures are crumbling with out-of-wedlock births increasing while, at the same time, the number of children being born is decreasing. Some worry about masculinity under attack while others believe that “toxic masculinity” is the cause of most problems. Many are even worried Read More ›

In our badly fractured society, can public servants and politicians act with decency and argue about policy with restraint and dignity? We believe the answer is yes, and so Wesley invited a man on the show who epitomizes such virtues to talk about his varied career and the importance of the nation’s founding principles. Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD, Read More ›

In one of the great atrocities in human history, Chinese political prisoners are tissue-typed and later murdered and harvested to supply the country’s thriving organ transplant black market. How long have regime enemies been so targeted and how does the system work? For years, that has been difficult to discern fully. China is one of the world’s most secretive societies Read More ›

Turnabout is fair play, they say. So on this episode of Humanize, Wesley is the guest, interviewed by the “Bioethics Babe,” the podcast of Center on Human Exceptionalism Fellow Arina Grossu Agnew. Arina and Wesley discuss the nature of transhumanism, its philosophical, moral, and political implications, its role as a substitute for religion, its threat to human equality, and whether Read More ›

Disability rights is a global social and civil rights movement that advocates for equal opportunities, accessibility, and freedom from discrimination. The goal is to ensure that people with disabilities participate fully and equally in society free from barriers in employment, healthcare, architecture, and education. It has been more than thirty-five years since President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Read More ›

Chimpanzees, we are told, are the closest relatives to human beings. Indeed, for years scientists claimed that there is only about a one percent difference separating the human genome from that of chimps. Some advocates even claimed that means humans are mostly chimps, or that chimps are mostly human, eroding the principle of human exceptionalism. But research published last year Read More ›

The struggle over the legality of abortion has roiled the country for more than fifty years. On one side, the pro-life movement insists that innocent life must be protected by the government and in morality from conception to natural death. On the other, “pro-choice” advocates insist that abortion is medical care and that the decision of whether to terminate a Read More ›

Is evil a metaphysical reality, or is it merely a word we use to describe intentionally destructive behavior or horribly painful outcomes? If evil is real, what is its nature? Can one believe in the existence of evil without having a religious understanding of reality? And if evil does exist, does that mean good must also? My guest today, a Read More ›

Whether or not human beings are exceptional is one of the most important questions of our age. Either we have unique value and moral responsibilities, or we are just another animal in the forest, and if that is how we perceive ourselves, it is precisely how we will act. Most contemporary commentary about this crucial issue deny our exceptionalism. But Read More ›

Something has gone terribly wrong with American medicine. The COVID pandemic broke the back of trust in our public health officials. There is an affordability crisis. Medical ethics have degraded to the point that doctors no longer take the Hippocratic Oath. Chronic diseases are on the rise, particularly in children. It has all become such a mess. But what should Read More ›

The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That isn’t science. It is religion, and these days, many have come to believe that never the twain shall meet. But what if the reality of God could be demonstrated scientifically? What evidence would it take? What would Read More ›

Mark Twain is generally credited with the quip, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The same can’t be said about climate change, which has become one of our most contentious and complicated public policy controversies. It’s also divisive. According to a recent Gallup Poll, sixty-two percent of those polled worry about climate change a great Read More ›

The existence of the human soul is usually described as a matter of faith unprovable by science. But is that true? What if evidence exists that we each do indeed have souls and even, that life continues after death? Whether we have souls and what happens to us after death — obliteration, reincarnation, heaven, hell — is a question about Read More ›

It is a hard fact of life that — if we live long enough — we or those we love will receive a devastating medical diagnosis. How we cope in such difficult circumstances can both impact the course of our personal recovery and, in some cases, uplift the human condition. Christian apologist and journalist Megan Basham has walked this difficult Read More ›

Religious freedom — the ability to live and act according to one’s faith — is one of our most fundamental human rights. But as Western society has secularized, the importance of religious freedom seems to have been eclipsed by other concerns. Indeed, freedom of religion is too often devalued in the public square, and in some places in the world, Read More ›

Euthanasia is bad medicine and even worse public policy. Once a society accepts the principle that killing is a splendid answer to suffering, the kinds and extent of suffering that come to be seen as appropriate reasons to cause death expands continually. Often, this suicide agenda — let’s call it — advances so slowly that, over time, people become acclimated Read More ›

We live in an era of cultural whiplash. Never has the potential for technological advances been more pronounced, and at the same time, the potential for wrenching societal dislocations so threatening. What are we to make of such times as these? Should we be excited or fearful, optimistic or quaking in our boots? For answers, Wesley turned to George Gilder, Read More ›

These days, hedonism strikes a beat in society. We have long been told that if it feels good, if it is what we want, so long as we aren’t hurting others, then, we should do it. But does that kind of self-indulgence really lead to a successful and satisfying life? Wesley’s guest on this episode of Humanize, Dr. Andrew V. Read More ›

Homelessness has become a crisis in the United States. We live in the richest country in the world, and yet one can drive down main thoroughfares of our most prosperous cities and be confronted with tent encampments lining streets, squalor, open-air drug markets, and destitute people begging. The crisis is multifaceted as it is seemingly intractable. What is the role Read More ›

Childhood in America today is often troubled. Children are experiencing mental health crises, suicidal ideation, educational underperformance, social discord, sexualization at young ages, and unprecedented social challenges. What to do? Wesley’s guest on this episode of Humanize, Katy Faust, has invested years of her life to solving the crisis of contemporary childhood. Faust believes the time has come to put Read More ›

For those who may not remember, Terri Schiavo was a profoundly cognitively disabled woman who became the subject of a legal and cultural battle that made international headlines. The case became a bitter and protracted conflict between Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband who wanted to pull her feeding tube, and the Schindler family that fought to save their child and sister’s Read More ›

We live in an increasingly secular age in which religious believers — particularly Christians — are accused of believing in myths, meaning false stories. But are religious myths really false? Moreover, do modernists have their own myths by which they live? And why do humans create myths and what societal purposes do they serve, anyway? The classical educator and Orthodox Read More ›

The creation of the modern hospice movement was a major advance in the care for people with terminal illnesses. Alas, in recent years, hospice has entered something of a crisis, with too many facilities offering inadequate care and some patients receiving short shrift of services to which they are entitled. To get to the bottom of the problem, Wesley invited Read More ›

The public health sector has been roiled by controversy and political turmoil in the last few years, what with the COVID pandemic, the fight over vaccine mandates, and questions about politicization of the sector. Beyond that, viruses make the news like never before. So, Wesley turned to an expert in both fields to learn more about virology, the government’s response Read More ›

What is the “mind”? Is it a pure product of raw brain activity? Or, is it something “other” — that can be experienced, but not measured, observed but not fully defined? Does free will exist? Are our brains just so many meat computers? A new anthology, Minding the Brain, explores these and related issues in depth — both from philosophical Read More ›

Medicine and healthcare have become one of the most contentious sectors of modern society. Doctors have greater scientific knowledge with which to help patients than at any time in history. But at the same time, the field seems to be heading in a more crassly technocratic direction, in which the human being seeking care may become lost in the attempt Read More ›

Religious persecution continues to afflict the world. Anti-Semitism abounds. Certain Islamic countries suppress minority faiths while Muslims face persecution in countries like India. Non-Orthodox Christians are persecuted in Russia, while some American Christians claim that they are discriminated against because of living out their faith precepts. In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on the suppression of the Catholic Church Read More ›

People with serious mental health issues often face years, if not a lifetime, of debilitating symptoms. These traumas can sometimes be difficult to treat, much less cure. And that has some people looking for new avenues of care beyond standard medicines, including — controversially — psychedelic substances such as Psilocybin, LSD, and the like. Enthusiasts believe that these substances offer Read More ›

It’s no secret that American education is experiencing a profound crisis. Many of our children can’t read, do mathematics, or learn basic life skills. At the same time, many accuse the education establishment of imposing radical ideological views on children such as gender ideology and anti-Americanism. The good news is that concerted efforts are underway to reform education to better Read More ›

American institutions are less trusted than ever before, our society is deeply divided, and much of the world is in turmoil. The problem isn’t religion, atheism, or ideology, per se. Rather, the real culprit — and one that receives far too little attention in public discourse — is the widespread embrace by social activists of utopianism, a zealous belief in Read More ›

Whether to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia is one of the most culturally contentious — and important — public policy debates of our time. Supporters of legalization call it a compassionate “last resort” means of preventing unnecessary suffering and promoting autonomy. Opponents see the intentional ending of the lives of the ill as a profound abandonment and a path to Read More ›

In the modern era, religious freedom — the ability to live and act according to one's faith — has been seen as a profoundly important human right. To a disturbing degree, that is no longer true. No one has put more thought into this urgent matter of human freedom than my guest today, Sam Brownback.

For the last Humanize episode of the season, I thought it would be edifying to explore how Discovery Institute's institutional programs dovetail with the work of the Center on Human Exceptionalism. Who better to ask than our intrepid president, Steven J. Buri?

In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on AI — artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of an era if incalculable human progress because of the power of AI? Or are we threatened with being made obsolete and perhaps extinguished in an age of intelligent machines? Or, perhaps, a combination of both? The program features two experts who have Read More ›

Most people support responsible environmental policies but may be unaware of how radical the leading edge of the movement has become as an increasing number of activists support granting personhood rights to nature. Is nature rights a subversive threat to human exceptionalism and our thriving or is it the next necessary step in society’s moral growth and key to preventing Read More ›

We live in a time in which eliminating suffering is considered by many to be society’s ultimate purpose. Too often, this leads to policies that eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer. Still, for those not experiencing intense pain or anguish, arguing for improved care instead of increased access to assisted suicide or euthanasia can seem like a blithe platitude. “If Read More ›

To say the least, bioethics is controversial. Many in the mainstream movement reject the sanctity and equal dignity of human life around issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and biotechnology. But there is a robust pushback against such approaches—a human dignity bioethics, if you will—that promotes medical ethics and public health policies that align with the “do no harm” ethic Read More ›

It is no secret that most of society’s critical institutions are suffering from a crisis of trust. One of these is science, which heretofore enjoyed the confidence of the vast majority of the American people. To learn, what happened, whether the loss of confidence is deserved, and what can be done about it, Wesley asked the Director of Discovery Institute’s Read More ›

Racism has been America’s lingering cancer. There is no question that great strides have been made in eradicating this evil from our culture since the bad old days of slavery and Jim Crow. But alas, the urgent task is not completed, and as a result, a great divide still lingers among too many Americans based on superficial and irrelevant differences Read More ›

We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only recently, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” to the other gender—particularly among children and teenagers—is becoming a flood. Much of the American medical establishment and the Biden administration claim that immediately yielding to children’s Read More ›

The southern border of the United States is in chaos. Millions of people from all over the world are flooding here each year, mostly illegally, but still allowed to remain in — and be transported free — throughout the country. Matters are quickly coming to a head. The crisis has strained our infrastructures, exacerbated our bitter political divisions, and called Read More ›

When the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutional right in Roe v. Wade in 1973, it not only throttled an important ongoing democratic debate in the country about legalizing abortion, but it tore this country’s culture apart. In the next fifty years, dedicated pro-life activists committed themselves to democratic engagement and advocacy to reverse Roe and return the Read More ›

The homelessness and addiction catastrophes on our city streets seem intractable. Unhygienic squatter tent cities. Human waste on our sidewalks. Used needles littering our parks. Crime. Collapsing commercial districts. It’s enough to make one turn away in despair and allow areas of our once most beautiful cities to become no-go zones. But some refuse to yield. One is veteran independent Read More ›

It is no secret that American politics are in crisis. Polls show that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives are increasingly estranged from each other, conservative red states and progressive blue states are enacting public policies that are dramatically dichotomous, and millions of people no longer trust the integrity of our electoral system. As this program is being recorded, there Read More ›

It’s no secret that American education is in a profound crisis. From dismal academic performance, to bitter contention over gender ideology taught in elementary school, the damage caused by COVID school lockdowns, a collapse in discipline, and fear of violence, “school days” have become much more complicated than reading, writing, and arithmetic.

A vibrant and engaged media is essential to protecting American liberty—which is why the First Amendment provides such a strong protection for freedom of the press. If the media are to carry out their societal responsibilities, journalists must have the trust of news consumers. But these days, trust is in low supply. An October 2022 Gallup Poll found that only Read More ›

Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy once opined that freedom of religion has “a double aspect—freedom of thought and action.” In other words, to be truly religiously free, one must not only be at liberty to believe, but act consistently with those beliefs. This concept of religious freedom—the right to live and act according to one’s faith—has historically been assaulted by totalitarian government Read More ›

The COVID pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Adding to our woes, the proper approach to scientific inquiry and policy makers’ relationship with the expert class became badly skewed. Once an orthodoxy was declared by the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control, government leaders, the mainstream media, and Read More ›

The United States has become the world’s most adamant promoter of what is now called “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents who identify as being other than their born sex. This approach ranges from “social affirmation”—the use of preferred pronouns, for example—to “medical affirmation,” such as puberty blocking, to radical “surgical affirmation,” meaning mastectomies, facial feminization or masculinization cosmetic procedures, Read More ›

In his first term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown famously said back in 1975, “There is no free lunch. This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it. Small is beautiful.” Was Brown right? These days, it seems that establishment thinking and most of the content on mainstream media believes it is so. Threats Read More ›