The Tears of Athena
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Galactic Underworlds
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How the Afterlife Stopped Evolving
LATE IN HER CAREER, after she’d already become famous for her critique of the medicalization of death in America, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published a letter that she’d written to a child: a little boy with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Why Does Optimization Feel So (Morally) Good?
YOU MIGHT BE morally disgusted by things like optimization culture and self-enhancement, rendering you morally immune to its effects.
Dispatches from a Place Built for People
IN THE CHICAGO O’HARE AIRPORT, in the midst of a 15-hour travel purgatory as we waited for our one-hour connecting flight back home to Louisville, my ten-year-old daughter told me that the toilets back home in America seemed angry and impatient.
In Which (Against the Pope, and Perhaps Unwisely) I Give Thanks for Posthumanism & Creaturely Life
I DON’T ACTUALLY intend to go up against the pope; my title is a little hyperbolic.
If You Have a Soul, Maybe Reading Will Save It
READING IS AN act shot through with various forms of power, but because it’s also so mundane these powers are easy to disregard.
Are Words Too Cheap Now?
A COUPLE OF weeks ago, I started to actually think about language again.
Writing is Also Artificial
Last week I was invited to speak at an event called Artifice: Questions of Language, Technology, and Devotion in Contemporary Classrooms hosted by a program called Teaching Religion in Public (TRiP) at Indiana University’s Center for Religion & the Human
Some Thoughts on a Humanities Revival (from a Pseudo-Humanist)
THE LIFE OF THE MIND can feel a bit dismal these days, what with the disinvestment in education and the rise of generative AI.
Who Gets to Do Theology?
OVER THE PAST several weeks I’ve been writing about public theology: how theological (or quasi-theological) ideas appear in public, and do things in the polis. Meanwhile, to the dismay of many in the American public, people like Pete Hegseth have essentially been doing public theology as they
Don’t Travel in America Without Your Religious Passport
AFTER MY POST last week, on the thorny matter of public theology, I was drawn (especially by the comments) to think a bit more about the people who are most likely to be shut out of conversations about theology: people who aren’t religious.
Do the People Really Want Theology?
THERE IS A New York Times op-ed that’s been making the rounds in my network, which is dense with people (like me) in the field of religious studies and theology.
Poetry and War
WAR IS IN THE PSYCHE these days, in the way that things like plastics get into the water.
Is There a Church-Shaped Hole on the American Left?
I AM AN ACADEMIC, but I won’t pretend as if I believe that there’s anything moral about the structure of higher education in America today.
AI is Giving People a Place to Put Their Shame
I’VE FOUND MYSELF THINKING about shame lately.
Does Love Still Have Civic Power?
AMERICANS MIGHT BE deeply loving people.
Maybe Your Solitude Isn’t Really About You
I FIND MYSELF annoyed by lamentations on the loss of solitude that I find on the Internet: claims that our dependence on social media, and the Internet itself, is eroding the capacity to spend time in solitude.
The Present is Thicker Than Ever
I KNOW THAT for most people the new year is a time of resolution and forward momentum, but for me it’s always a time of recollection.
Chatbot Confessionals
AI CHATBOTS felt like an existential issue, to me, almost as soon as they were unleashed upon the public in 2022.
The Internet Priests of Ordinary Life
RECENTLY, IN CLASS, I was trying to explain to my college students what a trance state is.