Journalist Bonnie Kristian joins to discuss her new book, "Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community." "We've spent forty years dramatically increasing how much information the average person encounters daily, and we've made no effort to equip ourselves to handle that shift," Bonnie writes. "So now … we have this deep confusion around what is knowable and what is true and who is trustworthy.” See Privacy Policy at https://...
Oct 07, 2022•58 min•Ep. 50
James K.A. Smith discusses his new book, " How to Inhabit Time : Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now," which released September 20, 2022, from Brazos Press. We discuss: the role of history in helping us learn discernment and live faithfully the ways that many Christians think they are living out ancient truths that are actually modern inventions how many Christians who "deconstruct" and end up leaving the faith are actually "rejecting the minority report" of the fait...
Sep 27, 2022•44 min•Ep. 49
The topic of Christian nationalism has been much in the news recently. Republican politicians like Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia both have claimed the term as their own, and Boebert in particular has loudly proclaimed that she does not believe in the separation of church and state. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” she said . “The church is supposed to direct the government; the government is not supposed to direct the church.” Perhaps the...
Sep 13, 2022•47 min•Ep. 48
Steven Levitsky is professor of government at Harvard University. He has spent most of his life studying Latin American politics and history, with a focus on political parties, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions. In 2018, he and fellow Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt, an expert on democracy in Europe, wrote a book called "How Democracies Die." Here, Steven and I discuss what he means when he calls political parties the "gatekeepers of democracy," and why th...
Apr 03, 2018•50 min•Ep. 46
Dan Koch, host of the Depolarize podcast, joins me to talk about his thoughts while reading "How to Think," by Baylor literature professor Alan Jacobs. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame . See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info....
Mar 30, 2018•39 min•Ep. 9
Seth Masket is the chair of the political science department at the University of Denver. He has dared to say what few will: that for party primaries and maybe all of American politics to be more productive and functional, it might need to be a little less democratic. He and fellow academic Julia Azari wrote a New York Times op-ed in December titled: “Is the Democratic Party Becoming Too Democratic?” Seth is the author of two books. His most recent is called “The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts t...
Mar 05, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 8
I'm introducing a new feature to The Long Form podcast, where I'll post short interviews with friends and public figures about the book that they are in the middle of. I don't want polished hot takes about a book someone has finished and fully digested. I want mid-process description of what sparks are flying around people's heads midstream through the book. And I love to know the backstory of how and why people start books. What intrigued them? What attracted them? And what are they getting out...
Feb 23, 2018•23 min•Ep. 7
He thinks machine politics is a distraction. Norm Ornstein has a different take from Jonathan Rauch and Elaine Kamarck on why our politics is broken. Ornstein believes increasing voter participation and reducing the role of money in politics are better goals, and that the Republican Party is far more of a culprit in creating dysfunction than are the Democrats. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote a book late last year with Thomas Mann and EJ Dionne called " On...
Jan 12, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 47
"When politicians can't get anything done, it breeds distrust. It breeds anger ... The weakening of parties ... most people think it's a good thing," Elaine Kamarck says. But, she warns that "the weakening of parties has meant the weakening of government. People don't like that, but very few people see the connection between political parties and government." Kamarck, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and a Democratic National Committee member and superdelegate, talks about her proposal to h...
Oct 20, 2017•50 min•Ep. 5
Jonathan Rauch's 2016 Atlantic cover story, "How American Politics Went Insane," argued that we've reformed our politics into dysfunction. We talk about how telling people to vote or participate in the process is not, on its own, going to solve our problems. We need people to either get involved in political parties or delegate authority to them. The irony, he says, is that "an unmediated, direct democracy, is less democratic and less representative than mediated democracy.” Episode 1 explained ...
Sep 19, 2017•46 min•Ep. 4
Jemar Tisby is one of the more compelling figures I am aware of when it comes to race and Christianity in America. He is the president of the Reformed African American Network, and is obtaining a PhD in the history of race and religion at the University of Mississippi. Jemar is on a "journey to figure out how … social justice and historic Christian faith connect: how faith catalyzes justice." And while he believes his faith identity transcends skin color, he rejects the idea that white and black...
Aug 14, 2017•57 min•Ep. 44
Yuval Levin, one of the most plugged in, influential conservative intellectuals in the country, joins me to talk about how modern Americans often think of institutions as platforms for self-promotion rather than molds that form us "into human beings who are capable of being free men and women, who will choose to do the right thing, generally speaking, and so can be left free to choose, and don’t have to be coerced into being responsible.” President Trump, Levin says, is a vivid example of someon...
Jul 20, 2017•35 min•Ep. 2
In this inaugural, introductory episode, I tell the story of standing on the floor of the Republican convention in Cleveland as the GOP squashed an anti-Trump rebellion. It caused me to start thinking about the role of institutions like political parties. I explain why this podcast exists, how I'm going to structure it, and how I got interested in the topic. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis recently said that the biggest threat to the country is not ISIS or Russia or terrorism, but "the lack of p...
Jun 21, 2017•23 min•Ep. 1
